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THE  CHILDREN 
IN  THE  SHADOW 


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THE  CHILDREN 
IN  THE  SHADOW 


BY 

ERNEST  K.  COULTER 

Formerly  Clerk  of  the  Children's  Court, 

New  York 
Founder  of  the  Big  Brother  Movement 


WITH  AN  INTRODUCTION  BY 
JACOB  A,  RIIS 


NEW  YORK 
McBRIDE,  NAST  &  COMPANY 
1918 


Copyright,    1913,    by 
McBride,  Nast  &  Co. 


Published,  February,  1913 


TO 
H.  L.  C. 


INTRODUCTION 

^TXrHEN  a  child  is  arraigned  in  Court, 
*  »  there  are  always  three  delinquents,  the 
child,  the  parent  and  the  community.  And  the 
last  is  the  worst  sinner,  for  it  let  the  slum  grow, 
that  wrecked  home  and  child  alike." 

That  is  the  answer  that  comes  from  the  Chil- 
dren's Court  to  the  cry,  "  What  of  the  night?  " 

It  is  well  for  us  all  that  we  had  so  faithful  a 
watchman  there.  But  Mr.  Coulter  does  more 
than  give  warning  of  disaster ;  he  knows  the  way 
out  and  he  points  us  to  it.  Long  years  ago,  at 
a  gathering  of  serious  men,  when  he  had  told  of 
the  sights  he  saw  daily  and  the  shamed  question 
struggled  to  the  surface :  "  Can  nothing  be 
done?"  he  was  ready  with  the  answer. 

"  Yes,  be  the  neighbor !     You  are  forty  sitting 

here.     If   each    of   you    were    to    be    neighbor, 

brother,  to  one  of  these  little  ones  and  see  him 

through,  forty  would  be  saved  from  shipwreck. 

It  is  not  law  the  lad  needs,  but  justice,  the  kind 

ix 


x  Introduction 

of  justice  which  only  the  brother  can  give  —  the 
love,  the  friendship,  for  which  his  life  has  been 
starving.  All  the  rest  will  come  on  the  trail  of 
that."  And  that  night  forty  entered  the  lists  for 
the  boy. 

The  forty  have  swelled  into  hundreds,  and  the 
Big  Brother  and  the  Little  Brother  have  made 
the  world  a  better  place  to  live  in.  For  they 
have  helped  us  understand  that  "neighbor"  is 
the  pass-word  that  gets  us  over  the  hard  places, 
and  that  nothing  else  will ;  not  laws  nor  reforms, 
nor  political  platforms  and  propagandas.  They 
are  all  ways  of  helping,  but  the  way  with  the  lad 
is  neighborly  friendship.  A  hand  laid  in  kind- 
ness on  his  shoulder  that  shrunk  just  now  from 
the  copper's  vengeful  grip  is  more  potent  for  his 
conversion  than  a  term  in  the  best  reformatory 
that  was  ever  planned,  if  there  is  one  deserving 
of  the  name. 

The  man  who  has  taught  us  this  has  a  right  to 
be  heard,  and  what  he  tells  us  in  these  pages  is 
well  worth  listening  to.  "No  child  is  born 
vicious."  In  his  soul  is  the  image  of  God  which 
the  slum  would  crush  out  with  "the  environ- 


Introduction  xi 

ment  that  makes  all  for  unrighteousness." 
That  at  last  we  are  bestirring  ourselves  to 
mend  that  environment  is  the  chief  claim  of  our 
day  to  be  better  than  all  that  went  before,  and 
in  that  the  share  of  Ernest  K.  Coulter  has  been 
no  mean  one. 


Ju**^^ 


FOREWORD 

This  is  the  story  of  the  three  delinquents,  the 
child,  the  parent  and  the  community,  as  it  comes 
from  the  new  but  greatest  social  clinics  in  the 
world,  the  Children's  Courts.  In  dealing  with 
the  child  we  deal  with  fundamentals;  there 
is  no  mask,  we  get  at  real  living  conditions,  the 
causes  that  lead  him  and  his  elders  into  conflict 
with  society  and  the  law. 

It  is  often  plain  that  the  real  culprit  that 
should  be  arraigned  is  not  the  child,  but  the  con- 
ditions that  have  brought  him  to  court.  We 
have  too  long  counted  property  rights  more  sa- 
cred than  human  rights :  "  the  tenements  are 
more  carefully  safeguarded  than  are  the  dwellers 
in  them,  the  traffic  in  the  streets  is  more  impor- 
tant than  the  little  child  who  plays  there  because 
he  has  no  other  place."  A  century  ago  children 
were  still  being  hanged  on  Tyburn  Hill  for 
larceny.  Half  a  century  ago  we  occasionally 
hanged  a  child  in  this  country  for  murder. 
There  were  laws  to  protect  the  horse  and  the  dog 

xiii 


xiv  Foreword 

from  cruelty  before  the  child  had  any  real  meas- 
ure of  protection.  A  dog  or  a  horse  could  be 
sold,  both  had  property  value.  But  a  man  could 
still  beat  his  child  into  a  state  of  insensibility 
and  thrust  him  into  the  streets  to  die  while  it 
was  criminal  for  him  to  strike  inhumanly  his 
dumb  brute.  Until  a  good  woman  invaded  a 
Hell's  Kitchen  tenement  less  than  four  decades 
ago  and  dragged  to  light  a  naked,  half-dead  little 
creature  whose  body  was  covered  with  the  marks 
of  the  shears  her  guardians  had  used  in  tor- 
turing her,  the  public  had  been  too  busy,  too 
selfish  to  think  of  laws  for  the  prevention  of 
cruelty  to  children.  Then  it  was  that  Henry 
Bergh,  who  was  the  head  of  an  animal  society, 
and  Elbridge  T.  Gerry  organized  the  first 
society  to  protect  children  from  cruelty.  It  is 
little  more  than  a  decade  too,  since  communities 
generally  ceased  to  arraign  children  in  company 
with  the  city's  outcasts,  thieves  and  thugs.  In 
the  slow  process  of  social  evolution  we  are  at  last 
beginning  to  realize  something  of  the  potentiali- 
ties of  the  child  of  to-day  in  the  affairs  of  to- 
morrow. 


Foreword  xv 

The  delinquent  parent  is  a  much  more  serious 
problem  than  the  delinquent  child.  Our  Chil- 
dren's Courts  are  proving  that  we  can  do  with 
the  latter  practically  as  we  please.  Unless  he 
is  mentally  defective  it  is  chiefly  a  question  of 
the  right  surroundings.  The  delinquent  parent, 
however,  is  not  of  such  plastic  material.  His 
habits  are  fixed,  but  he,  like  the  child,  is  largely 
the  product  of  environment. 

And  some  of  this  environment  we  shall  see. 
Believing  that  pictures  are  more  potent  than 
platitudes,  the  writer  has  frequently  introduced 
them  and  assures  his  readers  they  are  all  actual 
scenes,  a  few  of  the  thousands  that  have  come 
under  his  observation.  He  has  endeavored  to 
make  them  as  true  as  those  of  the  photographer, 
who  went  about  in  the  guise  of  a  peddler,  his 
street  subjects  all  unconscious  that  concealed  in 
the  box  he  carried  was  a  camera. 

The  community  is  the  most  culpable  of  the 
three  delinquents;  it  is  responsible  for  the  en- 
vironment. What  has  been  set  down  here  has 
been  in  the  hope  of  further  hastening  its  present 
rousing  from  its  self-indulgent  apathy. 


xvi  Foreword 

In  the  Children's  Courts  appear  most  clearly- 
all  the  wrongs  and  inequalities  whereby  organ- 
ized society,  selfish  and  therefore  ignorant,  warps, 
thwarts  and  denies  the  future  citizen.  If  the 
child  is  not  to  grow  up  to  become  a  public  charge, 
to  fill  the  charitable  institutions,  the  hospitals, 
the  prisons,  he  must  have  light  and  air  and  space. 
Every  crowded,  ill-ventilated  tenement  is  a  tax 
upon  the  future.  Each,  too,  is  a  breeding  place 
of  parental  as  well  as  juvenile  delinquency;  for 
each  the  community  is  responsible.  It  has  the 
right,  the  privilege,  the  power  to  correct  these 
evils,  but  it  has  not  been  attending  to  the  conduct 
of  its  own  affairs.  These  matters,  the  massing 
of  the  population,  the  regulation  of  immigration, 
the  hygienic  conditions  of  the  tenements,  rents 
and  wages  have  been  left  in  the  hands  of  those, 
who  profiting  by  congestion  and  extortion,  have 
been  blind  to  the  rights  of  our  neighbor  and  his 
child.  Our  Children's  Courts  will  do  much  to 
help  the  new  awakening. 

The  writer  has  watched  a  great,  sorrowful 
procession  of  one  hundred  thousand  children 
pass  before  a  single  tribunal,  which  he  helped 


Foreword  xvii 

to  organize  and  where  for  almost  ten  years  he 
served  continuously  as  an  official.  This  may 
give  him  the  right,  perhaps,  to  record  some 
of  his  observations  with  authority  —  observations 
of  the  three  delinquents,  the  grist  of  the  mills  of 
greed  and  an  awakening  social  conscience 
towards  the  children  in  the  shadow. 

For  permission  to  use  a  few  paragraphs  from 
articles  by  him  which  have  appeared  in  The 
North  American  Review,  The  Outlook  and  The 
Delineator,  the  author  wishes  to  make  grateful 
acknowledgment. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Chapter        I  THE  PROCESSION 1 

Chapteb       II  THE  NEW  LIFE-SAVING  STATIONS  .     25 

Chapteb     III  CRADLES  OF  DELINQUENCY   ...     41 

Chapteb      IV  THE  STOLEN  HERITAGE      ....     59 

Chapteb       V  THE  MILLS  OF  GREED 79 

Chapteb     VI  THE  HOPPERS 100 

Chapteb    VII  THE  STRANDED  HOST 113 

Chapteb  VIII  LABELING  THE  BUSINESS  .      ...  131 

Chapteb      IX  THE  DELINQUENT  PARENT     .     .     .154 

Chapteb       X  THE  CHILD  OF  BONDAGE  ....  177 

Chapteb      XI  THE  NURSERY  FOR  LITTLE  THIEVES  199 

Chapteb    XII  THE  MENTAL  MISFITS 225 

Chapteb  XIII  BIG   BROTHERS    AND    BIG   SISTERS  246 

Chapteb  XIV  THE  AWAKENING 271 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

A  Derelict  Skillet  Is  His  Ship   ........     Frontispiece 

FACING 
PAGE 

This  Pair  Walked  into  the  Children's  Court  and  Asked 

to  be  "Put  Away" 2 

Children  of  Six  Different  Nationalities 20 

A  Cast-off  Barrel  Must  Serve  as  a  Horse 36 

A  Tenement  "Living"  Room   .     .     „     ..     .     .     m    ...     .  54 

Sleeping  on  the  Pavement  .     .     . .     „     .,..,...  72 

Children  Doing  Factory  Work  at  Home 96 

A  Few  of  the  Million  Immigrants 110 

Sleeping  on  Fire-escapes  and  Eoof3 126 

A  Tenement  Court 146 

The  Pavements  Are  Their  Only  Green  Fields     ....  164 

Burdens  too  Heavy  for  Childish  Arms    .......  184 

On  the  Way  Home  with  the  Task 184 

A  Typical  Street  Scene 204 

The  Babies  Demand  Her  Attention                     „     .  228 

Their  Automobile  Is  a  Trifle  Crowded    .     .     .     .     ,.     .  228 

"Dutch  de  Barrel  Crook" 248 

A  Group  of  Big  Brother  Farm  Boys 266 


THE  CHILDREN 
IN  THE  SHADOW 


The  Children  in  the  Shadow 


CHAPTER  I 

THE   PROCESSION 

rpWO  little  wanderers,  ragged  and  forlorn, 
■*■  halted  in  front  of  a  squat  red  brick  build- 
ing that  stands  at  the  entrance  to  the  Bowery, 
the  great  gray  way  of  New  York.  They  studied 
its  doors  and  windows,  then  climbed  the  stone 
steps.  They  sat  there  a  moment,  their  frowsy 
heads  together,  in  whispered  conversation. 

Suddenly  they  leaped  to  the  middle  of  the  side- 
walk and  began  to  pummel  each  other  like  mad. 
They  punched  and  pounded,  giving  little  heed  to 
the  gathering  crowd;  but  they  stopped  now  and 
then  to  glance  at  those  doors  and  windows.  Ap- 
parently no  one  on  the  inside  was  looking.  They 
went  at  it  again  and  finally  their  entwined  little 
bodies  went  to  the  pavement  in  a  squirming 
lump.  And  still  they  battered  and  punched 
until  the  nose  of  one  was  bloodied  and  the  shirt 
of  the  other  was  lacking  a  sleeve.    A  great  hand 


2        The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

was  finally  laid  on  the  collar  of  each  and  they 
were  dragged  to  their  feet  and  through  the  por- 
tals of  the  old  building.  The  policeman  from  the 
sidewalk  tried  the  usual  police  grilling.  It  was 
answered  with  stolid  silence.  Then  someone, 
who  belonged  in  the  building,  and  who  better  un- 
derstood, tried  gentler  persuasion.  The  tears 
came  and  with  them  the  story  of  cruelty  and  neg- 
lect. 

These  boys  were  brothers.  There  was  no 
hatred  between  them.  They  had  been  driven 
from  the  place  which  custom  would  call  home, 
by  parents  who  wanted  to  be  rid  of  them.  They 
had  been  threatened  with  death  if  they  returned, 
and  the  old  marks  of  abuse  that  they  bore  on 
their  bodies  were  an  earnest  of  the  treatment 
that  awaited  them  if  they  went  back.  For  three 
weeks  they  had  passed  their  days  foraging  over 
the  refuse  heaps  of  the  markets  for  food,  their 
nights  had  been  spent  in  the  areaways,  huddled 
close  in  an  effort  to  keep  warm.  They  could 
have  gone  to  the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of 
Cruelty  to  Children  and  had  shelter,  had  they 
known  it. 


This  pair  walked  into  the  Children's  Court  one 
day  and  asked  to  be  "put  away."  The  father  had 
disappeared,  the  mother  had  died  a  week  before 
and  they  had  been  wandering  the  streets.  They 
were  sent  to  a  good  home  in  the  country 


The  Procession  3 

In  their  wanderings,  some  lad  told  them  of  a 
place  from  which  "bad"  boys  were  sometimes 
sent  away  to  homes  where  they  would  have  to 
work  hard,  it  was  true,  where  they  would  have 
to  be  in  bed  early  every  night  and  where  there 
was  always  someone  watching  them.  But  even 
their  confused  little  minds  were  able  to  work  it 
out  that  such  a  life  would  be  much  better  than 
the  one  they  were  living.  They  decided,  there- 
fore, that  they  would  "  get  took,"  as  they  called 
it. 

But  how  to  "  get  took  "  was  the  next  question. 
The  older  brother  had  suggested,  as  he  after- 
wards confessed,  that  "they  hit  a  guy  on  de 
block  wid  a  brick."  The  younger  brother  pro- 
tested that  "  de  guy  "  had  never  done  them  any 
harm.  Which  goes  to  show  that  even  in  the  most 
neglected  child  there  is  a  spirit  of  fair  play  and 
decency,  a  good  material  on  which  to  work  if  the 
community  will  get  at  it  before  it  is  crushed  out. 

The  boys  starved  and  shivered  for  two  more 
days  and  nights,  and  then  the  elder  one  sug- 
gested that  they  smash  a  jeweler's  window  and 
run  away  with  a  watch.    But  again  the  younger 


4        The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

boy  demurred,  this  time  offering  a  remedy  of  his 
own  invention  —  that  they  go  up  under  the  very 
nose  of  the  Court  and  fight  each  other  until  the 
police  were  forced  to  take  them. 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  record  that  the  parents  of 
those  boys  were  "  took  "  too.  When  the  black 
gowned  Judge,  who  presided  over  the  Children's 
Court,  ordered  that  the  father  pay  to  the  State 
exactly  what  it  would  cost  to  maintain  these  two 
youngsters  in  the  good  home  to  which  they  were 
sent  or  else  go  to  prison,  the  man  tore  his  beard 
in  his  rage  and  the  mother  screamed  hysterically 
and  had  to  be  carried  out  of  court. 

This  humane  tribunal,  one  of  the  very  recent 
products  of  a  newly  awakening  public  con- 
science, is  one  of  the  world's  greatest  centers  of 
human  interest.  It  was  not  the  first  Children's 
Court  to  be  established,  but  it  is  the  biggest. 
About  10,000  children  are  dealt  with  here  each 
year,  and  here  are  revealed,  as  in  no  other  way, 
the  city's  real  living  conditions.  The  cruelties 
of  parents  and  of  the  community,  the  hopeful- 
ness and  responsiveness  of  the  coming  citizens, 


The  Procession  5 

still  in  the  formative  period,  are  disclosed  with 
startling  vividness. 

A  little  fellow,  whose  baggy  trousers  are  held 
over  his  diminutive  nakedness  by  a  single  sus- 
pender, his  face  chalky  white  and  his  eyes  down- 
cast, stands  before  the  Judge,  and  he  woefully 
rubs  his  stomach. 

"What's  the  matter,  Beans?"  kindly  inquires 
the  Court. 

Beans  scarcely  lifts  his  eyes  and  replies  sadly : 

"  Me  stumach's  delirious,  Mister." 

When  it  is  learned  that  Beans'  sole  diet  for 
the  past  three  weeks  has  been  stale  buns  and 
water,  the  condition  of  his  stomach  is  readily 
understood.  It  is  not  Beans'  fault,  nor  that  of 
his  father;  they  were  doing  the  best  they  could. 
They  could  live  with  little  food,  but  they  had  to 
have  a  roof  under  which  to  do  the  sweatshop 
work.  Three  cents,  the  father  told  me,  was  the 
price  he  got  for  sewing  satin  linings  in  men's 
overcoats.  When  he  worked  hard  he  could  make 
five  dollars,  and  once  in  a  great  while  when  he 
sat  up  late  nights,  he  made  six  dollars  a  week. 


6        The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

He  used  to  make  more  when  his  wife  and  four 
children  helped  him,  but  the  white  death  had 
taken  her  and  all  the  children  except  Beans. 
The  Court  sends  Beans  to  a  good  home  in  the 
country  and  the  father  goes  back  to  his  slavery. 

"  James  Hennessy ! "  calls  the  clerk. 

A  door  at  the  side  of  the  crowded  court-room 
opens.  A  little  fellow,  stunted  and  anaemic, 
trots  out.  He  mounts  a  platform  in  front  of  the 
bench.  He  is  scarcely  able  to  keep  his  heavy  eye- 
lids open.  Jimmy  has  been  dragged  out  of  a 
dry-goods  box  sometime  between  midnight  and 
dawn  by  a  big  policeman  who  had  found  him 
fast  asleep  there.  A  hand  is  raised  as  a  sign 
that  the  officer  is  to  be  sworn  and  Jimmy  dodges. 
That  is  instinct,  he  has  been  dodging  all  his  life. 
His  whole  existence  has  vibrated  between  hatred 
and  fear. 

The  story  is  told  in  the  usual  stolid,  police- 
man's way.  There  are  a  few  formal  phrases 
about  "  exposed  and  neglected  "  and  "  improper 
guardianship,"  all  beyond  Jimmy's  ken.  He  is 
simply  a  cornered,  cowering  young  animal. 
The  gowned  Judge  in  the  big  chair  begins  to  talk 


The  Procession  7 

to  him.  The  strange  thing  to  Jimmy  is,  that  he 
is  neither  being  cursed  at  nor  reviled.  This  man 
is  speaking  quietly,  kindly.  Jimmy  knows  lit- 
tle of  church,  but  this  must  be  the  priest.  There 
is  a  queer  stirring  within  his  stunted  little  being, 
a  new  pucker  comes  to  his  pinched  face.  His 
fists  go  suddenly  to  his  eyes.  Then,  strangest  of 
all,  his  grimy,  tear-bedewed  hand  is  taken  gently 
by  the  gowned  man.  Jimmy  looks  fearfully  into 
the  man's  eyes.  He  suddenly  sees  something 
there  better  than  a  bed,  better  even  than  the  food 
he  craved,  a  something  for  which  he  had  dumbly 
starved,  the  first  ray  of  human  sympathy  and 
kindness  he  has  ever  had  in  his  whole  gray  lit- 
tle life. 

And  when  James  Hennessy,  erstwhile  of  Cor- 
lear's  Hook,  steps  out  of  the  court  he,  too,  goes 
into  a  good  home  and  so  is  saved  to  the  State. 
Jimmy  had  not  been  arrested  for  any  offense  he 
had  committed;  rather  it  was  the  offense  of  hia 
parents  who  had  deserted  him  months  before  and 
left  him  to  shift  for  himself.  This  story  is  one 
of  the  commonest  of  the  common  stories  of  the 
ten  thousand  that  annually  come  into  court. 


8        The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

An  Italian  mother,  an  infant  asleep  on  one 
arm,  leads  Giacomo  by  an  ear  before  the  Court. 
She  takes  the  stand  and  after  lifting  her  hand  to 
high  heaven  and  taking  the  oath,  through  an  in- 
terpreter, volubly  proceeds  to  swear  her  son's 
liberties  away.  There  is  no  charge  too  black  for 
Giacomo.  She  wants  the  boy  railroaded  to  the 
Collegio.  Giacomo,  the  culprit,  the  malefactor, 
stands  patiently  by.  On  a  sudden  the  baby  be- 
gins to  wail.  Giacomo,  the  outcast,  patiently 
reaches  into  the  pocket  of  his  little  jacket  and 
brings  out  a  feeding  bottle.  He  mounts  the 
stand,  places  the  nipple  in  the  crying  infant's 
mouth  and  steps  back  to  his  place  while  the  tale 
of  his  misdeeds  flows  swiftly  on.  The  Justice 
brings  his  gavel  down  with  a  whack. 

"  Stop ! "  he  commands,  turning  on  the 
mother.  "  I  have  learned  all  that  is  necessary 
about  Giacomo.  I  am  convinced  he  is  a  good 
boy;  you  are  simply  trying  to  get  rid  of  him. 
He  will  go  home  and  you  will  take  the  best  care 
of  him.  You  will  be  watched;  Giacomo  himself 
will  come  back  in  two  weeks  and  tell  me  how  you 
are  treating  him  J  " 


The  Procession  <) 

■  So  Giaeomo,  patient  and  long  suffering,  goes 
back  to  his  old  job  of  nursing  the  baby,  but  under 
new  auspices.  With  the  Court  taking  hold  that 
home  will  be  straightened  out,  and  the  boy  may 
get  the  chance  that  has  until  now  been  denied 
him. 

A  frightened  urchin  of  ten,  who  had  run  off 
with  a  pair  of  shoes  that  were  hanging  in  front 
of  a  store,  climbs  up  before  the  bench.  A  worn, 
anxious  mother,  who  sees  him  now  for  the  first 
time  since  he  was  taken  into  custody,  lays  a 
trembling  hand  on  his  arm.  Care  and  the  marks 
of  drudgery  are  on  her  face.  She  is  a  scrub- 
woman and  has  a  family  of  five  that  the  father 
has  deserted.     The  little  fellow's  eyes  fill. 

"Judge,  I  took  'em  for  me  little  sister,"  he 
quavers. 

The  sister  is  there,  two  years  younger  than  the 
defendant.  She  shows  her  sympathy  by  holding 
his  hand  and  patting  him  on  the  cheek.  The 
stolen  shoes  are  produced  and,  sure  enough,  they 
are  about  Emma's  size  and  Emma's  toes  are 
showing.  From  some  unknown  source  the  price 
of  those  stolen  shoes  is  dropped  into  the  com- 


10      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

plainant's  hand  and  lie  leaves  court,  grumbling 
in  his  beard.  A  member  of  one  of  the  charitable 
committees  constantly  in  attendance  at  Court  be- 
comes interested  and,  following  the  boy's  arrest 
and  arraignment,  things  will  look  up  in  that 
home.  In  days  before  Children's  Courts  were 
established  and  boys  and  girls  of  tender  years 
were  still  being  tried  at  a  bar  with  grown  crim- 
inals, this  lad  might  have  been  hurried  off  to 
a  reformatory  with  the  danger  of  being  contam- 
inated by  hardened  offenders  or  else  turned  into 
an  automaton. 

Then  comes  one  of  that  sleek,  suave,  well 
groomed  type,  physically  well-off  but  morally 
ruined,  a  boy  pickpocket.  He  is  charged  with 
having  taken  her  week's  wages  from  the  hand- 
bag of  a  working  girl.  The  plain  clothes  man 
saw  him  open  the  clasp  of  the  bag  in  crowded 
Grand  Street,  and  after  getting  the  pay  en- 
velope, quickly  pass  it  to  a  companion.  The  boy 
stoutly  denies  his  guilt  and  his  ready  tongue  of- 
fers a  plausible  story  of  how  he  was  simply  pass- 
ing at  the  time  and  the  detective  got  him  by 
mistake.     He  has  already  been  in  a  reformatory 


The  Procession  ll 

for  a  "  larceny  from  the  person  "  and  the  Judge 
knows  him  and  his  class  thoroughly.  There  is 
nothing  for  it  but  to  send  the  boy  back  to  the 
House  of  Refuge.  There  is  little  chance  that  he 
will  come  out  honest,  for  the  pickpocket  is  the 
one  almost  hopeless  child.  For  the  protection  of 
the  community,  however,  and  that  of  the  other 
boys  of  his  neighborhood,  it  is  necessary  to  isolate 
him.  Even  though  he  knows  he  is  to  be  sent 
away  he  refuses  absolutely  to  tell  of  the  men  who 
have  trained  him  and  who  have  been  profiting 
even  more  than  himself  by  his  thievings.  The  de- 
sire in  the  Children's  Courts  is  not  to  send  chil- 
dren to  institutions  but  to  keep  them  with  their 
parents  if  that  is  at  all  possible.  The  commit- 
ment of  some  children,  however,  is  absolutely 
necessary,  to  save  them  either  from  undesirable 
homes  or  from  themselves.  So  it  is  that  only 
about  one-fifth  of  all  the  children  arraigned  in 
the  New  York  County  Children's  Court  are  sent 
either  to  charitable  or  reformatory  institutions. 
A  tawny  haired,  brazen  faced,  overgrown 
girl  of  fourteen  is  called.  A  ragged  band  of 
crepe  has  ostentatiously  been  tied  to  a  sleeve  of 


12      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

her  jacket.  The  complaint  reads  that  this  girl 
is  in  danger  of  becoming  morally  depraved.  She 
has  been  frequenting  low  dance  halls  and  moving 
picture  places  and  has  often  been  away  from 
home  all  night  "  without  her  parents'  consent." 
Not  that  this  last  would  make  much  difference. 
They  are  worthless  people  and  have  not  even 
taken  sufficient  interest  to  be  in  court.  Lizzie, 
the  agent  says,  is  a  menace  to  the  neighborhood. 
There  are  so  many  menaces  in  her  neighborhood 
that  it  is  doubtful  if  one  more  or  less  would 
make  a  great  deal  of  difference  to  the  children 
there.  But  Lizzie's  own  future  is  to  be  thought 
of.  When  the  agent  finishes  his  story  and  after 
the  Judge  has  looked  at  the  record,  he  turns  to 
the  girl. 

"  I  understand  that  you  smoke  cigarettes." 

Lizzie  is  sullen  and  defiant. 

"  Show  me  your  hand,"  demands  the  Court. 

Lizzie  readily  puts  up  her  left  hand. 

"No,  your  right  is  the  one  I  want  to  see," 
quietly  observes  the  Judge. 

The  girl  reluctantly  holds  forth  her  right  hand 
for  inspection.    The  Judge  carefully  examines 


The  Procession  13 

the  fingers.    Yes,  the  tell-tale  stains  are  there. 

Now  Lizzie  is  ready  to  talk.  Here's  a  chance 
for  her  imagination  and  the  skilful  deceit  that 
she  has  been  employing  so  much  of  late. 

"  Say,  Judge,  do  you  know  Mrs.  Rose  who  lives 
in  our  house?" 

The  Court  has  not  the  honor  of  Mrs.  Rose's 
acquaintance. 

"Well,"  continues  Lizzie,  nothing  discon- 
certed, "  Mrs.  Rose,  she  fell  down  steps  last  week 
and  sprained  her  ankle  and  I  had  to  paint  it 
with  iodine."  She  has  other  explanations  quite 
as  ingenious  and  ready  when  the  Judge  ques- 
tions her  about  her  misdeeds.  The  Court  is 
familiar  with  such  stories  and  it  all  winds  up, 
at  least  for  the  present,  with  Lizzie's  being  sent 
away  to  a  reformatory  for  girls.  The  time  is  in- 
definite but  she  will  probably  be  out  in  a  year 
and  a  half  or  two  years;  then  there  will  be  an- 
other chapter.  The  question  is  if  it  will  do  Liz- 
zie any  good.  In  the  reformatory  where  she  is 
going  there  are  many  girls  worse  than  herself. 
There  are  no  cottages,  nor  opportunity  for  segre- 
gation by  groups,  a  plan  that  is  wisely  being 


14      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

followed  in  the  newer  institutions.  No  matter 
how  rigid  the  discipline  nor  how  persistent  the 
religious  instruction  there  will  be  companion- 
ship and  conversation  with  other  girls  whose 
knowledge  of  evil  is  wider  than  Lizzie's.  She 
has  been  a  product  of  bad  conditions;  will  the 
new  environment  help  her? 

Another  girl,  a  frail  creature  physically  and 
morally,  the  victim  of  a  vicious  mother,  is  ar- 
raigned. The  child  wears  silk  stockings  and 
when  the  agent  took  her  he  found  her  cheeks 
painted.  There  is  no  suggestion  of  that  now, 
for  the  tears  have  washed  it  off.  As  the  weep- 
ing child  is  led  away  she  looks  reproachfully 
at  her  flashily  dressed  mother. 

"Never  mind,  Florence,"  is  the  consolation 
the  mother  calls  back,  "  the  lower  you  fall,  the 
higher  you'll  bounce." 

Would  there  be  any  punishment  too  severe  for 
a  parent  like  this?  And  yet  this  mother  walks 
out  of  court  scot-free.  There  are  laws  dealing 
with  the  impairment  of  the  morals  of  children, 
but  they  are  totally  inadequate  as  relating  to 
parents. 


The  Procession  15 

Two  little  girls  whose  fair  faces,  dainty 
frocks,  and  be-ribboned  braids  mark  them  in 
sharp  contrast  to  the  array  of  children  still  to 
be  called  before  the  Judge,  are  arraigned  for 
breaking  into  a  house  and  stealing  a  quantity 
of  jewelry.  Were  they  adults  the  charge 
against  these  two  would  be  burglary.  But  in 
the  recent  awakening  to  a  consciousness  of  our 
duty  toward  the  child,  and  with  the  adoption 
of  saner  methods  of  dealing  with  child  offenders, 
they  are  no  longer  branded  as  criminals  in  this 
court.  When  they  are  under  sixteen  and  the  of- 
fense is  less  than  murder,  they  are  charged  with 
juvenile  delinquency;  or,  if  they  have  not  com- 
mitted an  actual  offense  themselves,  but  are  in 
court  because  they  have  been  neglected  or 
cruelly  treated  by  their  parents,  the  charge  is 
improper  guardianship.  In  broad  daylight 
these  two  little  girls  —  they  are  all  of  twelve  — 
have  climbed  a  fire  escape  to  the  sixth  story 
and  with  a  poker  forced  an  entrance  to  an 
apartment.  It  develops  that  the  window  had 
been  very  insecurely  fastened,  otherwise  their 
small  strength  would  not  have  enabled  them  to 


16      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

open  it.  One  had  stood  guard  on  the  fire  escape 
while  the  other  entered.  This  was  really  a  need- 
less precaution  because  they  knew  their  neigh- 
bors were  gone  for  the  day.  The  little  girl  who 
entered  passed  through  rooms  with  which  she 
was  familiar  —  the  people  they  were  robbing 
were  friends  of  her  family  —  and  went  directly 
to  a  dresser  drawer  from  which  she  took  a  jewel 
box.  She  emptied  the  contents  into  a  black  bag 
which  the  children  had  made  especially  for  this 
occasion.  On  returning  to  the  fire  escape  she 
passed  the  bag  to  her  waiting  companion,  and 
the  latter  ascended  by  the  fire  escape  to  the  roof. 
The  little  girl  who  had  actually  taken  the  jew- 
elry remained  behind  to  close  the  window  and 
cover  the  retreat,  then  the  child  burglars  joined 
forces  on  the  housetop.  They  crept  from  chim- 
ney to  chimney,  peeked  over  ledges,  and  made 
their  "  get-away "  apparently  with  all  the  care 
of  trained  house  breakers.  They  reached  an 
open  scuttle  through  which  they  gained  the 
stairway  and  finally  the  street,  some  doors  away 
from  the  house  they  had  robbed.  Soon  they 
were  distributing  rings  and  trinkets  to  wonder- 


The  Procession  17 

ing    playmates    who    gathered    around    them. 

These  little  girls  —  these  infants  engaging  in  a 
bold  burglary  that  had  been  carried  out  after 
most  careful  thought  and  preparation  —  had  good 
homes,  apparently,  and  the  whole  affair  was  so 
incongruous  that  it  caused  the  Court  to  marvel. 
The  dramatic  element  was  so  conspicuous,  and 
the  talk  of  the  children  so  ingenuous  that  the 
Court  decided  there  must  be  a  careful  probing 
to  reach  the  inspiration  of  the  plot.  While  the 
children  evinced  actual  pride  in  the  details  of 
their  burglary  they  were  absolutely  silent  as  to 
how  the  notion  was  put  into  their  small  heads. 

The  two  are  finally  remanded  to  the  custody  of 
the  Society  until  an  investigation  can  be  made. 
After  several  days  the  agents  discover  that  the 
father  of  one  of  the  little  girls  is,  in  addition 
to  his  regular  business,  the  silent  partner  in  a 
moving  picture  show,  and  that  his  daughter  has 
had  free  access  to  this  exhibition.  She  has  been 
spending  a  large  part  of  her  out-of-school  hours 
there  and  has  always  taken  the  other  little  girl 
with  her.  They  have  witnessed  a  picture  drama 
of  the  nickel   novel  type,  called  "  The  Great 


18      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

Diamond  Robbery,"  until  all  its  details  have 
taken  firm  hold  on  their  receptive  imaginations. 
The  actors  in  this  criminal  adventure  have  be- 
come their  heroes.  It  was  the  daughter  of  the 
moving-picture  man  who  proposed  that  they 
plan  and  carry  out  a  robbery  of  their  own.  The 
desire  has  not  been  for  gain,  but  to  do  something 
dramatic  and  exciting  —  it  was  a  form  of  play. 
By  a  strange  fate,  it  had  been  his  own  child 
that  the  moving  picture  man  was  leading  into 
criminal  acts,  through  the  low  class  of  pictures 
showing  in  his  place.  Other  children,  too,  had 
doubtless  come  under  the  harmful  influence. 

The  evil  effects  of  the  moving  pictures  in 
which  crime  is  shown  are  often  apparent  in  the 
Children's  Courts.  It  has  not  been  long  since  a 
group  of  boys,  who  tried  to  wreck  an  express 
train,  confessed  that  the  crime  was  suggested  by 
such  exhibitions.  As  to  the  two  little  girls, 
they  are  doing  splendidly  to-day;  it  is  needless 
to  say  that  the  father  of  the  one  has  given  up 
the  moving-picture  business.  The  educational 
value  of  moving  pictures  is  fast  being  recognized, 
but  many  communities  are  still   strangely  de- 


The  Procession  19 

linquent  in  not  providing  proper  municipal 
supervision  for  such  places. 

A  smartly  dressed  youngster  in  knicker- 
bockers, who  wheeled  up  to  the  Court  with  his 
father  in  a  big  red  automobile,  is  charged  with 
having  broken  a  street  lamp.  The  boy  was  ar- 
rested the  evening  before,  but  was  released  on 
the  father's  promise  to  produce  him  the  next 
morning.  By  a  wise  provision  of  law,  the  par- 
ent of  any  child  who  has  been  arrested  for  an 
offense,  which  in  an  adult  would  not  amount  to 
a  felony,  can  thus  obtain  the  child's  release  over 
night  pending  his  arraignment  in  the  Children's 
Court.  The  Judge,  who  in  this  common  sense 
court  is  prosecutor,  judge  and  jury  combined, 
calls  Robbie  to  him.  The  self-important  father 
thrusts  out  a  card  with  a  Murray  Hill  address 
engraved  upon  it  and  would  push  past  the  at- 
tendant to  reach  the  Judge.  The  Judge  mo- 
tions to  the  officer  to  keep  the  father  outside  the 
rail. 

"  Did  you  break  the  lamp?  "  asks  the  Court. 

"Yes,  sir,"  is  the  boy's  straightforward  re- 
sponse, and  it  does  the  heart  of  the  Court  good. 


20      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

Bobbie's  father  fumes.  The  boy's  honesty  en- 
rages him.  Such  truthfulness  will  never  do  for 
Robbie  in  business! 

"  What  do  you  say  that  for?  You  know  you 
did  not  do  it!" 

The  Judge  looks  at  Robbie's  elder  in  disgust. 
He  has  the  boy  removed  from  earshot,  and  or- 
ders the  father  brought  before  him.  The  Court 
does  not  wish  to  humiliate  Robbie  by  the  things 
he  is  going  to  say. 

"  Your  boy  has  been  manly  enough  to  tell  the 
truth,  and  yet  you,  his  father,  think  so  little  of 
him  that  you  would  have  him  come  into  a  court 
of  law  and  tell  a  lie.  The  fact  that  he  has  acted 
in  such  a  manly  way  is  solely  to  his  own  credit. 
There  will  be  a  parole  in  this  case,  but  it  will 
not  be  the  boy  who  is  on  probation.  Unless  you 
can  do  better  for  him  it  will  be  necessary  for 
the  Court  to  take  him  away.  Your  boy  is  still 
a  splendid,  manly  fellow,  but  we  must  protect 
him." 

Robbie  is  again  called  before  the  Judge.  The 
lesson  of  the  bigger  the  crowd,  the  less  the 
rights  of  the  individual,  is  now  explained  to  the 


The  Procession  21 

boy  in  terms  he  can  understand  —  there  must 
be  laws  in  crowded  places,  for  the  good  of  all, 
that  are  not  necessary  in  the  country.  The 
street  lamp  was  broken  in  a  game  of  ball,  there 
was  no  malicious  intent  in  the  boy's  mind,  it 
was  an  accident.  The  Court  wishes  there  was 
something  like  adequate  play  space  for  the  city's 
children.  Very  often  does  the  Court  express 
this  wish  to  the  thousands  of  children  brought 
before  it,  upon  like  charges,  the  children  to 
whom  the  city  in  effect  forbids  the  right  even 
to  play. 

A  youngster,  the  single  captive  in  a  police 
raid  on  a  street  game  of  "  One-O'-Cat,"  was 
brought  to  the  Court  in  a  state  of  terror.  He 
sat  in  a  far  corner  of  the  detention  room,  his 
face  wet  with  tears  and  trembling  like  a  leaf. 
In  the  eyes  of  the  other  boys,  most  of  them  there 
on  charges  far  more  serious,  he  was  an  object 
of  scorn.  They  called  him  a  "Molly"  and  a 
"  dope." 

He  suddenly  stopped  crying,  wiped  his  eyes 
with  his  shirt  sleeve,  and  then  committed  an  un- 
pardonable act  —  he   slipped   from   the  bench, 


22      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

fell  on  his  knees,  and,  unmindful  of  all  the  lads 
around  him,  started  to  pray: 

"  Please,  O  God,  don't  let  them  send  me  to 
prison.     I'll  never  play  ball  again !  " 

What  a  sad,  wretched  pledge  for  a  normal  boy ! 

And  so  the  pathetic  procession  moves  on. 
These  are  but  a  few  typical  pictures  that  show 
some  of  the  ailments  of  the  child,  the  parent, 
and  the  community,  as  revealed  in  this  greatest 
of  all  social  clinics.  Through  the  sane  and  hu- 
mane methods  employed  the  vast  majority  of 
the  children  brought  into  court  are  saved  to  use- 
ful citizenship.  A  study  of  the  figures  for  one 
period  of  six  years  showed  that  only  eight  per 
cent,  of  the  children  arraigned  here  came  back  a 
second  time.  As  has  already  been  said,  it  has 
been  necessary  to  commit  to  institutions  only 
about  one-fifth  of  those  arraigned.  The  Chil- 
dren's Courts  have  often  been  called  the  "  Courts 
of  one  more  chance."  The  parole  and  probation 
system,  although  yet  in  its  infancy  and  still  far 
from  perfect,  has  worked  such  excellent  results 
that  rarely  in  any  one  year  have  more  than  ten 
per  cent,  of  the  children  released  under  its  super- 


The  Procession  23 

vision  failed  to  make  such  good  progress  that  it 
has  been  unnecessary  finally  to  commit  them  to 
institutions. 

The  litigation  in  most  courts  turns  on  money. 
These  child's  tribunals  concern  themselves  with 
a  prize  of  greater  worth  —  the  citizenship  of  to- 
morrow.    They  are  great  life-saving  stations. 

And  yet  with  all  these  good  results  there  are 
communities  to-day  still  so  blind,  so  selfish,  that 
they  are  locking  up  the  children  in  company 
with  thugs  and  murderers.  Only  recently  in 
visiting  a  jail  in  a  Southern  city  I  found 
a  child  of  thirteen  imprisoned  in  the  same  pen 
with  about  thirty  tramps,  thieves  and  despera- 
does. Here  within  the  shadow  of  the  gallows 
—  for  looking  out  the  grated  window,  we  could 
see  its  grim  structure  —  this  boy  had  been  con- 
fined for  weeks  because  he  had  ridden  off  on  an- 
other lad's  bicycle.  There  are  many  communi- 
ties in  which  children  of  tender  years  are  still 
languishing  in  jail  —  this  with  all  our  boasted 
Twentieth  Century  spirit  of  humanitarianism. 

In  addition  to  what  Children's  Courts  are  do- 
ing directly  for  the  child,  they  are  destined  to  be 


24      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

of  tremendous  service  in  improving  the  social 
conditions  of  the  entire  community.  For  here 
daily  loom  up  evils  that  must  speedily  be  over- 
come if  we  are  to  have  regard  for  to-mor- 
row's wholesome  citizenship.  In  these  Children's 
Courts  stand  out  most  vividly  the  menace  of  the 
further  overcrowding  of  the  already  inhumanly 
congested  tenement  districts,  the  wretchedness 
growing  out  of  a  practically  unregulated  immi- 
gration, the  poverty  and  the  public  charges  pro- 
duced by  the  landlord's  uncontrolled  greed,  the 
human  sacrifices  to  tenement  speculation,  the 
wholesale  desertion  of  families  by  irresponsible 
parents,  and  all  the  forms  of  parental  de- 
linquency. There  are  crime,  poverty,  ignorance 
and  neglect  on  the  one  side,  fostered  by  the 
State's  blind  selfishness,  and  on  the  other  to 
combat  them  properly  there  must  be  a  new 
awakening  to  reason  and  humanity.  There  are 
remedies  at  hand  and  we  must  use  them. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  NEW  LIFE-SAVING   STATIONS 

f"\UR  Children's  Courts  are  laying  bare  as  they 
^-^  were  never  revealed  before  those  living  con- 
ditions that  not  only  are  contaminating  the  child, 
but  that  too  often  transform  our  grown  neighbor 
into  an  enemy  against  society.  The  child  here- 
tofore has  been  amenable  to  the  State;  the  day 
is  coming  when  the  State  will  be  amenable  to  the 
child.  The  purpose  here  is  not  a  technical  dis- 
cussion of  the  procedure  of  our  Children's  Courts 
but  rather  a  consideration  of  certain  living  con- 
ditions revealed  through  them.  As  some  read- 
ers, perhaps,  have  but  vague  notions  as  to  the 
origin  and  functions  of  these  tribunals  for  chil- 
dren, a  few  words  regarding  their  development 
may  not  be  amiss. 

In  the  slow  process  of  social  evolution,  the 
rights  of  the  child  have  been  the  last  to  be 
recognized.     We  have  been  more  concerned  about 

25 


26      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

property  rights  than  we  have  about  human  rights. 
The  child  being  the  weakest  member  of  the  com- 
munity, has  been  the  last  to  come  into  anything 
like  his  own.  A  century  ago,  as  we  have  seen, 
they  were  still  hanging  children  on  Tyburn  Hill 
for  larceny.  In  fact,  in  1756,  a  child  was  be- 
headed because  he  stole  a  shawl  and  his  head  was 
set  on  a  paling,  as  a  warning  to  other  children 
not  to  steal.  Lord  Edward  Thurlow,  Lord  Chan- 
cellor of  England,  declared  in  the  latter  part  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  that  the  child  was  the 
ward  of  the  State,  but  it  was  more  then  one  hun- 
dred years  before  that  idea  took  hold  to  the  ex- 
tent of  enabling  child  delinquents  really  to  come 
under  Chancery  jurisdiction.  A  half  century  ago 
we  still  occasionally  hanged  a  child  for  murder 
in  this  country.  How  jealous  our  courts  are  of 
their  jurisdiction  and  what  difficulties  beset  any 
attempt  to  improve  their  archaic  procedure! 
Children  who  have  offended  against  the  law  — 
yes,  and  those  whose  only  sin  has  been  to  have  a 
drunken  or  brutal  parent  —  have  until  very 
recent  years  been  locked  in  jails  and  felons' 
cells  to  await  the  State's  disposition  of  their 


New  Life-Saving  Stations         27 

cases.  Men  failed  utterly  to  realize  that  these 
children  were  usually  the  victims  of  bad  en- 
vironment; that  they  were  a  plastic  material 
whose  future  the  community  could  mold  as  it 
pleased.  No,  these  children  were  herded  with 
murderers,  thieves  and  tramps,  and  thus  the 
righteous  community  bred  criminals.  The  State 
of  Massachusetts  in  1863  did  pass  a  law  intended 
to  separate  the  child  under  the  age  of  sixteen 
years  in  court  from  the  adult  charged  with  crime. 
But  little  or  no  attempt  was  made  to  enforce  it, 
and,  after  a  time,  it  became  a  dead  letter. 

Another  law  was  passed  some  years  later, 
which  provided  that  juvenile  offenders  should  be 
tried  separately  from  adults  charged  with  crime 
"  at  suitable  times  which  shall  be  designated 
therefore  by  the  Police  District  and  Municipal 
Courts,  and  shall  be  called  the  session  for 
juvenile  offenders  for  which  a  separate  docket 
and  record  shall  be  kept."  This  law,  except  as  it 
was  applied  in  Boston,  was  not  enforced  until 
within  a  very  few  years. 

Women  have  forced  most  of  our  steps  toward 
humanitarian  progress.    Possibly  this  is  because 


28      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

the  men  are  so  busy  with  the  bread  winning  that 
they  do  not  have  time  to  think  of  these  things. 
The  organization  of  the  first  society  for  the 
prevention  of  cruelty  to  children  was  due  to  the 
efforts  of  a  good  woman,  who  saw  that  children 
were  often  being  beaten,  starved  and  outraged 
by  cruel  parents  and  guardians,  while  the  State 
looked  on  with  apathy.  It  was  a  fortunate  day 
for  suffering  childhood  the  world  over,  when 
Mrs.  Etta  A.  Wheeler  went  into  a  Hell's  Kitchen 
tenement  in  New  York  in  1874,  to  minister  to 
a  woman  who  was  dying  of  tuberculosis.  The 
sound  of  blows  and  a  child's  cries  came  from 
the  room  adjoining  that  in  which  the  dying 
woman  lay.     The  sufferer  turned  to  her  visitor : 

"  You  cannot  save  me  but  you  can  save  that 
child  and  that  will  give  me  a  peaceful  death." 

Mrs.  Wheeler  tried  to  go  to  the  rescue,  but  her 
way  was  barred  and  her  pleas  were  answered 
with  curses.  She  went  to  the  police ;  they  turned 
a  deaf  ear.  The  magistrates  to  whom  she  ap- 
plied shook  their  heads.  They  were  sorry  but 
they  could  issue  no  warrant  unless  there  were 
eye  witnesses  to  the  assaults.     She  turned  to 


New  Life-Saving  Stations         29 

some  of  the  leading  citizens,  so  called.  They 
threw  up  their  hands  aghast.  The  idea  of  inter- 
ference between  parent  and  child !  —  it  was  not 
to  be  heard  of.  That,  too,  reflected  the  attitude 
of  the  world  as  late  as  1874.  But  the  cries  of 
that  child  rang  in  the  ears  of  Mrs.  Wheeler ;  she 
could  not  sleep.  She  had  heard  of  Henry  Bergh, 
who  had  organized  a  society  for  the  prevention 
of  cruelty  to  animals.  In  desperation  she  turned 
to  him. 

Mr.  Bergh  consulted  with  Elbridge  T. 
Gerry,  who  was  counsel  for  that  society,  and 
together  they  scanned  the  statutes  for  a  law  un- 
der which  it  was  possible  to  proceed.  They 
searched  in  vain.  They  finally  decided  that  if 
the  law  did  not  give  the  child  the  protection  that 
God  intended  for  every  human  being,  they  would 
give  the  child  the  protection  the  law  accorded 
the  brute.  The  child  belonged  in  the  animal 
kingdom,  and  on  that  broad  construction  they 
were  about  to  send  an  officer  of  the  animals' 
society  into  the  tenement,  when  Mr.  Gerry  suc- 
ceeded in  obtaining  from  a  Supreme  Court  Judge 
in  chambers  a  writ  of  habeas  corpus.    When  the 


30      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

door  of  the  miserable  tenement  room  was  forced, 
an  eight-year-old  girl  was  found  shrinking  and 
shivering  in  a  corner.  She  was  naked  except  for 
the  rags  of  a  tattered  calico  skirt.  Her  wan, 
pinched  face  was  a  mass  of  unhealed  cuts  and 
bruises.  The  scars  which  covered  her  arms  and 
body  told  of  repeated  assaults.  On  her  legs  were 
long  abrasions  still  fresh  which  had  been  in- 
flicted with  a  pair  of  heavy  scissors. 

Mary  Ellen  was  the  child's  name,  and  that 
name  is  to-day  famous  in  humanitarian  history. 
She  had  been  abandoned  by  her  parents,  was 
cared  for  by  a  charity  society  for  a  time,  and 
then  adopted  by  a  family  of  the  name  of  Con- 
nolly. She  wras  never  allowed  to  play  with  other 
children.  Her  only  food  was  scraps  from  a 
scanty  table.  Her  foster  mother  was  in  the 
habit  of  beating  her  every  day,  either  with  a 
twisted  rawhide  whip  or  the  shears,  and  for  no 
reason  other  than  a  perverted  satisfaction  she  got 
from  seeing  the  child  suffer.  For  lack  of  other 
clothing,  the  officer  wrapped  Mary  Ellen  in  a 
horse  blanket  and  then  carried  her  to  a  waiting 
carriage. 


New  Life-Saving  Stations         31 

A  great  public  clamor  started  when  the  child 
was  laid  before  the  judge  in  court.  Jacob  A. 
Riis,  who  was  one  of  the  pioneers  in  the  work  for 
the  betterment  of  children,  and  who  with  his 
masterful  pen  and  untired  labors  has  perhaps 
done  more  for  humanitarian  progress  than  any- 
other  one  man,  was  there  that  day.  The  reader 
has  perhaps  followed  him  in  one  of  his  own  books 
through  that  dramatic  scene  in  court.  Men 
looked  on  that  bruised,  beaten  body  of  the  half- 
starved  child  and  wondered  that  they  had  been 
so  long  blind.  They  realized  that  there  had  been 
thousands  of  Mary  Ellens,  yes,  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  them.  Elbridge  T.  Gerry,  Henry 
Bergh  and  John  D.  Wright,  the  Quaker  philan- 
thropist, at  once  began  the  organization  of  the 
first  society  for  the  prevention  of  cruelty  to 
children.  A  law  drafted  by  Mr.  Gerry  was  en- 
acted in  1875,  which  gave  this  society  the  right 
to  prefer  complaints  before  any  court  or  magis- 
trate in  any  matter  relating  to  or  affecting  chil- 
dren. Two  years  later  came  another  law  which 
prohibited  that  any  child  under  the  age  of  sixteen 
who  was  under  restraint  or  conviction,  should 


32       The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

be  locked  up  with  adults  charged  with  or  con- 
victed of  crime.  Some  States,  as  we  have  seen, 
are  still  permitting  this.  The  parent  society  in 
thirty-eight  years  of  its  existence  handled  in 
New  York  City  alone,  cases  of  218,715  children. 
There  is  scarcely  a  civilized  community  of  con- 
siderable size  in  the  world  to-day  that  does  not 
have  a  similar  organization. 

Three  pictures  hang  in  the  directors'  room  of 
the  New  York  Society  to-day,  one  of  Mary  Ellen, 
as  she  was  when  rescued  from  the  Hell's  Kitchen 
tenement,  the  other  of  her  to-day,  surrounded  by 
a  happy  family  of  her  own,  for  she  became  the 
wife  of  a  prosperous  up-State  farmer,  and  the 
third,  that  serene  face  of  Etta  A.  Wheeler,  the 
savior  of  not  only  Mary  Ellen  but  of  multitudes 
of  other  children  who  would  have  suffered  end- 
less brutality  and  even  death,  but  for  her  insist- 
ence that  the  child,  too,  had  some  rights. 

Really  effective  laws  establishing  separate 
tribunals  for  children  came  as  the  result  of  a 
much  later  awakening  to  a  new  consciousness 
of  the  community's  duty  to  the  child.  Now  that 
the  Children's  Courts  movement  has  become  so 


New  Life-Saving  Stations         33 

widespread,  several  cities  have  laid  claim  to 
credit  for  their  origin.  Judge  Ben  B.  Lindsey, 
who  has  been  in  the  forefront  in  the  fight  for 
children's  rights  and  who  took  up  his  great  work 
in  Denver  in  1901,  has  frequently  been  called  the 
"  father  of  the  Children's  Court."  He  disclaims 
that  distinction  and  says :  "  So  much  through  so 
many  earnest  souls  has  gone  to  make  up  our 
present  system  of  children's  laws  that  no  single 
individual  can  well  be  so  credited." 

It  is  an  institution  that  has  developed  from  the 
tardy  workings  of  many  minds  along  new  lines. 
In  my  investigations  of  the  subject  I  have 
learned  that  there  were  a  number  of  humane  and 
sensible  magistrates  and  judges  who,  without  the 
authority  of  any  special  statute,  but  guided 
solely  by  their  sense  of  the  fitness  of  things,  held 
the  hearings  of  children  brought  before  them 
separate  from  adults  at  least  ten  years  before 
the  first  separate  courts  for  children  were  estab- 
lished by  law.  This  is  true  of  some  of  the  magis- 
trates in  the  smaller  cities  of  New  England  and 
particularly  in  Connecticut. 

While  larger  cities  have  been  busy  claiming 


34      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

credit  for  the  first  effective  Children's  Court 
laws,  the  modest  little  city  of  Providence,  R.  I., 
seems  to  have  been  hiding  its  light  under  a 
bushel.  The  Grand  Jury  in  the  County  of  Provi- 
dence, R.  I.,  in  October,  1896,  found  that  several 
children  had  been  locked  in  the  county  jail  for 
weeks  during  the  summer  recess  of  court.  One 
of  them,  a  small  boy,  was  there  because  he  had 
stolen  something  from  a  bakery,  probably  a  pie. 
He  and  other  children,  who  were  merely  wit- 
nesses, had  been  herded  behind  the  bars  with  the 
lowest  types  of  criminals.  The  Grand  Jury, 
when  this  was  reported  by  James  Snow,  Jr., 
Michael  J.  Harson  and  others  of  its  members, 
awakened  with  a  start.  They  presented  a  me- 
morial to  the  Common  Pleas  Division  of  the  Su- 
preme Court,  in  the  course  of  which  they  said: 

We  have  had  several  cases  before  us  in  which  the 
parties  charged  with  crime  were  very  young  persons  and 
in  which  the  witnesses  were  very  young  also.  We  believe 
that  great  and  permanent  injury  may  be  done  to  the  future 
of  young  boys  and  girls  by  dragging  them  before  a  Grand 
Jury  in  the  same  docket  with  a  large  number  of  serious  and 
grave  crimes,   committed  in  many  instances  by   notorious 


New  Life-Saving  Stations         35 

criminals.  We  further  believe  that  the  ends  of  justice  are 
not  best  served  by  bringing  such  young  persons  for  trial 
before  an  ordinary  session  of  the  Court  under  similar  con- 
ditions of  association  with  crime  and  criminals.  We  be- 
lieve such  a  course  can  result  only  in  the  gravest  injury  to 
their  whole  future  lives. 

We  therefore  beg  this  Honorable  Court  to  recommend 
to  the  Legislature  that  some  provision  be  made  for  the 
separation  of  juvenile  cases  from  adult  cases ;  that  the 
former  be  brought  before  the  Grand  Jury  in  special  session, 
and  further  that  such  cases  be  tried  before  a  special 
session  of  the  Court  to  be  known  as  a  Juvenile  Court,  for 
the  trial  of  such  offenders. 


This  Court,  like  all  other  human  institutions 
since  the  beginning,  hesitated  at  any  radical  de- 
parture from  the  deeply  worn  rut  of  procedure. 
The  presiding  Justice  in  responding  to  the  memo- 
rial, spoke  of  the  impropriety  of  the  Court  volun- 
teering advice  to  a  coordinate  branch  of  the  Gov- 
ernment. The  Court  and  the  legislature  bowed 
and  scraped  back  and  forth  for  about  two  years, 
while  the  herding  of  children  with  criminals  con- 
tinued. But  women  took  up  the  fight  and  they, 
after  enlisting  the  aid  of  a  number  of  prominent 
men,  won  the  legislature  over  in  1898  to  passing 


36      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

a  law  providing  for  the  separate  arraignment 
and  trial  of  children  in  the  Counties  of  Provi- 
dence and  Newport,  and,  as  they  had  been  named 
in  the  old  Massachusetts  law,  designated  the 
separate  sessions  as  the  "  Sessions  for  juvenile 
offenders." 

The  law  also  provided  for  a  separation  of 
children  from  adults  in  custody.  An  amendment 
passed  the  following  year  that  extended  this  law 
to  every  county  in  the  State. 

The  proposition  to  create  a  special  court  for 
children  in  Chicago  in  1899  was  derided  as  the 
"  foolishness  of  a  lot  of  women  and  other  long- 
haired cranks."  The  same  cry  has  been  set  up 
against  most  steps  for  human  betterment.  It 
was  heard  when  someone  first  dared  to  denounce 
the  hanging  of  children  on  Tyburn  Hill  for 
crimes  against  property.  It  has  been  used  ef- 
fectively in  blocking  legislation  by  those  who 
have  thrived  on  child  labor.  Practically  all  of 
the  laws  for  the  regulation  and  restriction  of 
child  labor  have  been  enacted  since  the  National 
Child  Labor  Committee  was  organized,  and  that 
is  within  the  past  decade.     But  "sentimental- 


New  Life-Saving  Stations         37 

ity"  prevailed  and  Chicago  got  its  Children's 
Court. 

There  were  two  preludes  to  the  actual  estab- 
lishment of  separate  courts  for  children  in  New 
York.  The  first,  in  1893,  when  Joseph  M.  Deuel, 
then  a  magistrate,  decided  on  his  own  initiative 
to  hold  all  hearings  of  children's  cases  in  a  room 
apart  from  the  police  court.  But  jurisdictional 
barriers  were  met  that  could  not  be  overcome 
and  the  plan  was  finally  abandoned.  Thomas 
Murphy,  a  Buffalo  magistrate,  on  his  own  re- 
sponsibility opened  a  court  for  children  in  1899, 
in  a  building  occupied  in  part  by  the  county 
morgue.  That  was  the  only  place,  so  the  city 
declared,  that  was  available,  but  Judge  Murphy 
decided  that  the  atmosphere  of  a  morgue  was  not 
as  dangerous  to  children  as  that  of  the  ordinary 
police  court.  The  District  Attorney  of  New 
York  County  and  a  cohort  of  defenders,  went  fly- 
ing to  Albany  in  1901  to  guard  the  sacred  rights 
of  the  State  constitution  against  invasion,  when 
a  bill  drafted  by  Judge  Deuel  was  introduced  in 
the  legislature,  to  provide  for  a  separate  court  for 
children  in  New  York  City.     Among  the  oppo- 


38      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

nents  to  the  bill  were  men  who  were  regarded  as 
able  jurists,  but  the  women  saved  the  day  again 
and  with  the  result  that  the  court  was  opened 
in  the  following  year. 

The  branding  of  an  eight-year-old  girl  as  a 
"  Protege  of  Crime  "  and  the  fact  that  she  was 
sentenced  to  an  institution  where  she  came  into 
contact  with  older  persons  steeped  in  immoral- 
ity, set  the  women  of  Philadelphia  to  work,  under 
the  leadership  of  Mrs.  Hanna  Kent  Schoff,  to 
bring  about  a  different  condition.  The  child  in 
this  particular  case  had  been  motherless  since 
she  was  two'  years  old,  was  an  inmate  of  an  or- 
phanage, and  later  a  drudge  in  a  boarding  house, 
with  no  companionship,  except  that  of  ignorant 
servants.  She  set  fire  to  a  house,  and  when  she 
was  asked  why  she  did  it,  replied :  "  To  see  the 
engines  run."  This  child  was  tried  in  a  criminal 
court  with  all  the  formality  that  would  have  at- 
tended the  trial  of  an  adult  murderer.  After 
the  girl  had  been  committed  to  a  reformatory 
where  there  were  older  girls  who  had  been  con- 
victed  of  all  sorts  of  offenses,  Mrs.  Schoff  remon- 
strated with  the  Judge.     He  said  there  was  no 


New  Life-Saving  Stations         39 

other  place  to  send  her  and  that  "  they  did  not 
want  her  there  because  of  the  character  of  her 
offense."  The  child  was  finally  removed  from 
the  reformatory  —  rescued  we  might  properly 
say  —  and  placed  in  a  good,  private  home.  Some 
years  ago  I  knew  that  she  had  developed  into  a 
sweet,  attractive  girl,  who  was  loved  by  all  who 
came  into  contact  with  her.  To  make  sure  that 
the  "  hopeless  little  criminal,"  as  she  had  been 
called  when  first  taken  into  custody,  was  still 
filling  a  useful  place,  I  wrote  to  Mrs.  Schoff  re- 
cently and  asked  for  the  subsequent  record.  Her 
reply  is  as  follows: 


"  The  girl  who  was  considered  hopeless  is  to-day  a  grad- 
uate of  one  of  our  State  normal  schools,  Assistant  Princi- 
pal of  a  large  school,  took  the  prize  in  Bible  study,  and  is 
in  every  way  a  useful  and  good  woman." 


Five  hundred  children  ranging  in  age  from  six 
to  sixteen  years  had  been  confined  in  the  Phila- 
delphia County  Prison  in  the  enlightened  year 
of  our  Lord  1900.  The  original  Children's  Court 
law  that  the  Philadelphia  women  succeeded  in 
having  passed,   was   declared   unconstitutional. 


40      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

But  another  law  that  passed  later  has  with- 
stood all  attacks. 

To  take  up  the  history  of  each  Children's 
Court  in  turn  would  be  impracticable,  for  within 
the  past  few  years  all  of  the  larger  cities  have  es- 
tablished these  tribunals  which  are  based  on  hu- 
manity and  common  sense.  A  sketch  of  the  de- 
velopment of  the  Children's  Court  in  Indianapolis 
under  Judge  Stubbs  would,  for  instance,  furnish 
material  for  a  chapter  in  itself.  And  as  we  said 
in  the  beginning,  the  intention  here  is  not  to  dis- 
cuss Children's  Courts  in  themselves,  but  rather 
the  living  conditions  that  they  reveal. 

Each  court  has  its  own  methods  suited  to  the 
particular  needs  of  the  community  in  which  it  is 
established.  No  Children's  Court  is  perfect  as  no 
individual  and  no  human  institution  can  be  per- 
fect. These  courts  are  in  their  infancy,  and  there 
is  no  city  that  yet  has  an  ideal  Children's  Court. 
That  is  for  the  future,  but,  as  we  shall  see,  they 
are  already  beginning  to  be  great  factors  in 
educating  the  community  to  new  responsibilities 
to  our  neighbor  and  his  child. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  CRADLES  OP  DELINQUENCY 

"A  body  that  don't  get  started  right  when  he's  young 
ain't  got  no  show."—  Mark  Twain  in  "  Huckleberry  Finn." 

TN  your  journeyings  up  and  down  the  city  did 
you  ever  leave  the  beaten  track  and  look  in 
on  some  of  our  neighbors?  Unless  we  have  we 
know  nothing  of  the  causes  of  the  delinquency. 
Reading  about  poverty  and  congestion  in  books 
is  one  thing,  seeing  it  face  to  face  is  another. 
Unless  we  see  for  ourselves  how  in  the  densely 
packed  districts,  the  community  robs  children 
and  parents  of  the  elemental  things,  light,  air, 
space,  we  have  neglected  our  duty  as  citizens. 

Nature  intended  every  child  to  have  a  fair 
start.  No  child  is  born  vicious  and  at  birth 
nearly  all  are  physically  sound.  The  sensibilities 
of  society  have  been  touched  of  late  by  the  idea 
of  exposing  its  members  to  tuberculosis.  But 
there  are  other  destructive  forces  which  sap  the 

41 


42      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

community's  moral  vitality  quite  as  surely  as 
tuberculosis  undermines  its  physical  strength  and 
to  which  the  dwellers  in  the  tenements  are  in- 
evitably exposed.  We  are  just  beginning  to 
realize  that  "in  caring  for  all  its  children  the 
State  is  simply  caring  for  itself."  In  other 
words,  we  are  beginning  to  rouse  from  our  social 
irresponsibility.  We  may  have  self-indulgently 
lulled  ourselves  into  a  complacent  belief  that 
there  is  a  great  separation  between  ourselves  and 
our  neighbors  of  the  tenements.  The  only  bar- 
rier between  us  in  truth  is  that  built  by  our  own 
ignorance,  which,  perhaps,  should  be  spelled  — 
selfishness.  If  the  "  emptiness  of  ages  "  does  sit 
on  our  neighbor's  face,  if  the  life  of  his  child  is 
early  snuffed  out,  or,  surviving  malnutrition  and 
neglect,  his  child  reaches  criminal  ways,  the  re- 
sponsibility is  chiefly  ours.  Why?  you  ask;  be- 
cause we  do  not  see  to  it  that  our  neighbor  gets 
his  opportunity  for  life,  the  opportunity  to  which 
all  are  entitled. 

A  puny  culprit,  who  had  forced  and  entered  a 
store  at  night,  stood  before  the  Judge  in  the 
.Children's  Court.    When  the  case  of  The  People 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency       43 

was  proved  beyond  doubt,  the  Judge  turned  to 
the  lad. 

"  Did  you  ever  hear  of  God?  "  he  asked. 

The  prisoner  thought  hard,  then  faltered: 

"  I've  heard  me  mudder  and  de  boys  in  de 
street." 

The  name  of  the  Supreme  Being  he  had  heard 
only  in  blasphemy. 

The  mother  of  this  boy,  it  was  later  learned,  had 
once  poured  a  teakettle  full  of  boiling  water 
on  his  bare  legs.  That  was  but  one  of  the  many 
cruelties  he  had  suffered  and  the  marks  of  which 
he  carried  on  his  thin  body.  The  home  of  the  boy 
was  in  "  The  Ink  Pot,"  a  black  habitation  in  one 
of  the  packed  districts.  With  such  environment 
there  was  little  wonder  that  this  lad  was  in  a 
fair  way  of  becoming  a  criminal.  That  was  sev- 
eral years  ago  and,  thanks  to  the  Court's  efforts 
and  the  wholesome  surroundings  into  which  the 
boy  was  transplanted,  he  has  developed  into  a 
useful  young  man.  Just  as  long  as  it  tolerates 
the  "  Ink  Pots  "  and  the  thousands  of  other  black 
and  miserable  holes  that  serve  for  human  dwell- 
ings, so  long  will  society  be  responsible  for  chil- 


44      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

dren  who  go  wrong.  The  vast  majority  of  hur 
man  beings,  whether  children  or  grown-ups,  nat- 
urally possess  kindly,  lovable,  and  decent  tend- 
encies. It  is  the  thwarting  of  these  by  the  com- 
munity's neglect  that  leads  to  so  many  arraign- 
ments in  the  Children's  Courts. 

No  matter  how  vicious  and  depraved  are  his 
parents,  when  a  child  enters  the  world  he  is  pure 
and  innocent.  In  bad  surroundings  physical 
deterioration  manifests  itself  at  once.  Before 
there  can  be  any  effect  morally  the  child  must  for 
a  time  have  survived  these  physical  conditions. 
He  must  have  attained  to  some  degree  of  under- 
standing before  moral  contamination  can  touch 
him.  The  child  is  no  more  responsible  when  bad 
surroundings  do  begin  to  take  effect  than  he  is 
for  the  anaemia  he  suffers  because  of  malnutri- 
tion and  physical  neglect.  One  English  author- 
ity, who  made  an  extensive  investigation  in  the 
tenements,  in  connection  with  the  Inter-Depart- 
mental Committee  on  Physical  Deterioration,  de- 
clares that  whatever  the  antecedent  condition  of 
the  parents,  ninety  per  cent,  of  the  children  are 
healthy  when  born.    Eminent  obstetricians  in 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency      45 

this  and  other  countries  give  the  same  testimony. 
But  life  is  correspondence  with  environment. 
The  influence  of  heredity  has  long  served  as  a 
thought  of  refuge  for  many  respectable  persons 
who  want  to  shirk  responsibility  to  their  neigh- 
bors. It  has  been  so  easy  to  say :  "  Oh,  well,  his 
father  was  bad ;  what  could  you  expect  ?  "  And  it 
is  fortunate  we  are  at  last  learning  that  a  boy 
need  not  necessarily  be  vicious  because  his  father 
or  mother  did  not  have  a  spotless  record.  What 
a  hopeless  world  it  wTould  be  if  that  theory  held 
good !  A  great  humorist  once  declared  that  if  we 
all  went  far  enough  back  we  would  find  a  gallows 
rampant  in  the  family  tree. 

To-day  we  are  even  regarding  that  frayed-out 
old  case  in  criminology,  the  Jukes  case,  in  a  new 
light.  Had  there  been  a  sane  method  of  dealing 
with  the  first  generation  of  Jukes  the  State 
would  have  been  spared  that  million  and  a  quar- 
ter of  dollars  spent  in  seventy-five  years  for  the 
punishment  of  criminals  and  the  maintenance  of 
paupers  all  belonging  to  this  family,  and  it  also 
would  have  escaped  all  the  volumes  of  pessimism 
of  which  they  formed  the  subject.    The  old  con- 


46      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

struction  placed  on  the  case  was  that  merely  be* 
cause  the  original  stock  was  criminal,  all  the  suc- 
ceeding branches  were  criminal  also.  But  we 
now  see  that  the  source  of  all  this  line  of  law 
breakers  and  paupers  did  not  lie  in  criminality 
but  in  feeble-mindedness.  It  is  feeble-minded- 
ness  that  is  hereditary  and  not  criminality.  On 
the  other  hand  defectiveness  often  leads  to  crim- 
inality. Had  there,  for  instance,  been  some  spe- 
cial institution  where  Max  Jukes,  the  progenitor 
of  that  family  of  900  persons,  could  have  received 
special  medical  attention  and  care  there  would 
not  have  been  the  widespread  mental,  moral,  and 
physical  disaster  that  this  degenerate  family 
caused.  The  ratio  of  pauperism  among  them 
was  nearly  eight  times  as  great  as  in  the  whole 
population. 

But  the  vast  majority  of  delinquent  children 
are  not  mentally  defective;  their  delinquency  is 
due  for  the  most  part  to  their  surroundings,  and 
for  that  the  community  is  responsible.  In  look- 
ing back  over  the  ranks  of  the  children  that  I 
have  seen  pass  through  the  Children's  Court 
there  are  few  —  except  the  mentally  defective  — - 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency      47 

who  stand  out  as  showing  that  a  vicious  parent 
necessarily  means  a  vicious  child.  But  there  are 
cases  without  number  going  to  prove  that  while 
a  child's  antecedents  have  been  vicious  and  de- 
praved in  the  extreme,  the  boy  or  girl  can,  with 
proper  help,  rise  superior  to  the  line  and  be 
safely  set  upon  the  road  to  useful  citizenship. 

Into  a  sodden,  smoke-clouded  room  in  the  rear 
of  an  East  Side  saloon  there  staggered,  early 
one  morning  some  years  ago,  a  drunken  mother, 
leading  her  shrinking  thirteen-year-old  daughter. 
They  had  been  dispossessed  from  their  one  room 
and  had  been  tramping  the  streets.  The  mother 
dragged  the  child  from  table  to  table  in  the 
saloon. 

"  Ain't  she  a  fine  young  'un?  "  she  inquired  as 
she  passed  from  group  to  group. 

Some  of  the  men  set  down  their  glasses  and 
reviled  the  pair  for  disturbing  them  and  some 
gazed  evilly  at  the  child  who  was  comely  despite 
lack  of  food  and  sleep.  The  mother  finally 
climbed  upon  a  table  and  hanging  to  a  post  to 
steady  herself  began  to  auction  off  her  daughter. 
"  I'm  going  to  sell  her  to  the  highest  bidder,"  she 


48      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

declared;  the  girl  tugged  at  her  skirts  and  the 
mother  struck  her  a  blow  in  the  face. 

"  I  can't  have  her  tagging  around  with  me,  but 
she's  a  good  'un  and  worth  twenty  dollars  if  she 
is  worth  a  cent.  Who'll  make  the  first  bid?" 
One  loafer  attempted  to  embrace  the  girl.  She 
twisted  out  of  his  arms  and  ran  to  the  street, 
followed  by  the  man  and  her  mother,  who  had 
been  helped  from  the  floor  where  she  had 
fallen.  She  was  now  cursing  wildly.  A  police- 
man took  the  pair  into  custody,  the  daughter  to 
the  Society  and  the  mother  to  a  police  station. 

This  child  was  afterwards  placed  in  a  good 
home.  Here  everything  was  strange  to  her,  but 
the  good  people  who  adopted  her  made  all  due 
allowance  and  with  patience  and  love  they 
trained  her.  To-day  she  is  the  greatest  pride 
of  her  foster  parents  and  her  splendid  young 
womanhood  compels  the  admiration  of  all  her 
associates.  So  much  for  what  wholesome  en- 
vironment will  do  for  the  illegitimate  daughter 
of  a  prostitute  and  beggar. 

One  of  the  most  useful  men  I  know  to-day  saw 
his  father  murder  his  mother  in  cold  blood  in 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency       49 

the  tenement  cellar  where  they  lived.  The 
father  had  come  to  this  country  as  a  fugitive 
after  having  feloniously  assaulted  a  woman  in  his 
native  land.  After  he  had  been  here  a  year  or 
two  he  sent  for  his  wife  and  child,  not  because 
of  any  love  for  them  but  because  he  wanted  their 
earnings.  His  wife  failed  to  turn  over  enough 
money  to  satisfy  him  one  day  and  he  killed  her. 
The  child,  being  the  sole  witness,  was  detained 
by  the  authorities  pending  trial.  The  youngster 
attracted  the  attention  of  an  official,  who  in  the 
preparation  of  the  murder  case  had  occasion  to 
question  the  boy.  Through  legal  technicalities 
the  father  escaped  with  a  conviction  of  murder 
in  the  second  instead  of  the  first  degree  and  was 
sentenced  to  life  imprisonment.  The  official  who 
had  been  interested  in  the  boy  took  him  into  his 
own  home  where  he  was  treated  as  a  son.  The 
father  had  been  in  prison  only  a  short  time  when 
in  a  fit  of  passion  he  killed  a  fellow  convict. 
The  boy's  friend  then  legally  adopted  the  lad 
and  sent  him  through  the  public  schools  and  to 
college.  To-day  this  man  is  a  great  power  for 
social   good.     The   United    States   Government, 


50      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

recognizing  his  ability,  once  sent  him  abroad  on 
an  important  mission.  On  his  return  he  re- 
ceived an  offer  of  a  place  that  would  pay  him 
three  times  the  salary  he  was  receiving  for  his 
social  betterment  work.  "  No,"  he  replied,  "  I 
can  do  more  good  for  the  largest  number  where  I 
am  and  the  place  where  I  can  do  the  most  good  is 
the  place  for  me.''  Had  this  man  not  been  re- 
moved from  his  old  surroundings  and  had  he 
later  wound  up  in  state's  prison  or  an  alms- 
house some  sociologist  who  hit  upon  his  history 
would  probably  have  pointed  to  it  as  another 
demonstration  of  that  over-worked  theory  of 
heredity. 

A  noble  woman  who  is  the  head  of  one  of  the 
best  known  private  schools  for  young  ladies  in 
New  York  has  at  various  times  legally  adopted 
little  girls  to  the  number  of  nine,  all  of  whom 
were  born  in  poverty.  Most  of  them  she  has 
taken  when  they  were  still  so  young  that  they  re- 
membered little  of  their  first  homes.  She  has 
placed  them  in  good  surroundings  and  attended 
faithfully  to  their  training  and  education.  Un- 
der these  good  influences  each  of  the  nine  girls 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency      51 

has  developed  into  a  useful  member  of  society. 
Several  of  them  now  have  fine  homes  of  their 
own. 

We  often  hear  it  said  that  it  is  difficult  to  do 
anything  for  delinquent  girls.  It  was  the 
writer's  privilege  recently  to  look  in  on  a  "  re- 
ception "  given  by  a  club  of  half  a  hundred 
young  women,  each  of  whom  at  one  time  or  an- 
other had  been  arraigned  in  the  Children's 
Court.  They  had  been  there  on  all  sorts  of 
charges,  from  improper  guardianship  to  bur- 
glary—  at  least  some  would  have  been  charged 
with  burglary  had  they  been  over  the  age  of  six- 
teen at  the  time  of  arrest.  The  fact,  however, 
that  they  had  been  in  the  Children's  Court  or 
ever  in  serious  trouble  was  unknown  to  most 
of  those  present;  the  girls  themselves  had 
evidently  forgotten  all  about  it.  To  look  at 
that  spotlessly  gowned,  radiant  faced  com- 
pany that  danced  and  laughed  so  happily 
was  to  find  it  difficult  to  believe.  Big  enough 
in  heart  and  understanding  to  know  that  a  girl 
no  less  than  a  boy,  who  had  been  worsted  by 
bad  environment  was  not  a  vicious  creature  to 


52      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

be  spurned  and  denied  a  further  chance,  the 
good  woman  who  was  responsible  for  this  club 
had  given  the  girls  opportunities  that  each  had 
used  so  well.  Yes,  as  we  shall  see,  the  Big 
Sisters  can  do  just  as  effective  work  as  the  Big 
Brothers. 

But  let  us  make  a  little  pilgrimage  if  we  are 
to  observe  some  of  the  commonest  conditions 
that  cause  not  only  juvenile  but  adult  delin- 
quency. 

Leaving  the  great  city's  highway  of  commerce 
or  its  avenue  of  fashion  we  push  east  with  the 
throng  for  a  few  blocks,  then  turn  into  one  of 
those  narrow,  tenement-banked  streets  crowded 
with  pushcarts  and  humanity,  where  between 
bawling  hucksters,  the  shrill  cries  of  children, 
the  mixture  of  alien  speech,  we  have  come  into 
a  veritable  bedlam.  As  we  are  jostled  and 
crowded  along  we  wonder  how  the  children  here 
ever  get  a  chance  to  play.  Just  ahead  of  us, 
however,  if  our  eyes  be  sharp,  we  may  see  a  game 
in  progress,  not  a  wholesome  one,  but  one  that 
shows  how  some  of  the  youngsters  of  this  dis- 
trict, where  humanity  is  packed  in  at  the  rate 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency      53 

of  1,600  to  the  acre,  are  finding  an  outlet  for 
their  energies.  Two  alert  lads  are  pushing  close 
to  an  Italian  woman  who  carries  a  market 
basket  on  one  arm  and  a  handbag  on  the  other. 
One  has  opened  the  clasp  on  the  bag  and  is 
feeling  about  for  the  money,  "sounding,"  these 
little  thieves  call  it.  Then  comes  a  cry :  "  Here, 
Nell ! "  the  warning  from  a  third  boy  stationed 
somewhere  in  the  crowd  that  the  police  are 
near,  and  instantly  the  other  two  dart  off  in 
different  directions  through  the  crowd  and  are 
gone.  The  child  pickpocket,  as  we  shall  see 
later,  is  an  almost  hopeless  problem.  For  him 
also  the  community  that  permits  all  this  con- 
gestion and  fails  to  provide  the  children  of 
these  districts  with  adequate -play  space  is  more 
or  less  responsible. 

The  life  of  the  crowded  .streets  with  the  thou- 
sands of  things  to  attract  his  attention  and 
sharpen  his  wits,  the  hard  struggle  that  the 
tenement  boy  sees  on  every  hand,  often  give  the 
child  of  the  crowded  districts  a  surprising  pre- 
cocity. The  example  of  his  parents  and  their 
neighbors   who   must   desperately   struggle    for 


54      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

survival,  mature  his  mind.  Unfortunately  for 
the  child,  the  happenings  from  which  he  draws 
his  premature  philosophy  of  existence  are  not 
such  as  to  tend  to  good  moral  development.  A 
vast  army  of  immigrants  is  herded  into  the  al- 
ready over  congested  tenement  districts  of  New 
York  City  each  year.  The  majority  of  aliens  on 
arrival  are  robust,  otherwise  they  would  not 
pass  the  examination  at  Ellis  Island.  But 
after  they  have  been  crowded  into  the  un- 
sanitary tenements,  deprived  of  light  and  air 
and  forced  to  slave  through  all  the  waking  hours 
for  meagerest  pittances,  physical  deterioration 
occurs  quickly  enough  among  many.  How  can 
we  wonder  at  moral  deterioration? 

Let  us  walk  a  little  farther  along  the  streets 
and  see  for  ourselves  what  it  is  to  live  in  one  of 
the  tenements.  Above  us  rattle  the  trains  of 
the  elevated  road.  We  walk  past  a  moving 
picture  theater  gay  with  crude  presentments  of 
what  your  ten  cents  will  afford  you  within  — 
on  this  side  a  stout  lady  simpers  rosily  on  a 
green  background  and  on  the  other  a  miracu- 
lous fire  department,  an  elopement,  battle,  mur- 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency       55 

der  and  sudden  death  all  in  three  pictures. 
When,  we  wonder,  will  the  general  public  realize 
that  the  amusements  offered  to  the  children  are 
of  as  much  importance  as  any  other  form  of 
education. 

Then  we  turn  into  the  street  beyond.  The 
doorway  before  which  we  stop  is  full  of  children 
trying  to  play  upon  the  doorstep.  The  hall  is 
very  dark  and  ill-smelling;  although  we  cannot 
see  as  we  mount  the  creaking  stairs,  there  is 
the  evidence  of  other  senses  to  tell  us  it  is  far 
from  clean.  As  we  go  on  there  wells  up  to  us 
that  odor  which  is  made  up  of  many  odors, 
which  Galsworthy  has  called  the  smell  of  pov- 
erty itself,  a  part  of  the  very  life  that  is  lived 
here.  We  knock  at  last  at  the  top  door  in  the 
rear;  there  is  a  pause,  a  shuffling  step  and  it  is 
opened  by  a  woman.  Life  has  laid  so  heavy  a 
hand  upon  her  that  it  counts  for  twice  her  years. 
The  things  she  has  endured  have  all  left  their 
mark  —  long  hours  and  light  pay,  the  ache  in 
back  and  eyes  that  comes  with  monotonous  and 
heavy  toil;  and  fear,  the  endless  fear  for  the 
rent  and  the  dwindling  coal  in  the  box,  the 


56      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

lessening  loaf  in  the  cupboard,  these  have  drawn 
heavy  lines,  have  dulled  her  eyes  and  bent  her 
shoulders.  And  in  her  one  room  in  which  she 
buys  so  high  the  dear  privilege  of  life,  in  which 
she  brings  up  and  feeds  her  four  small  children, 
we  see  behind  her  a  great  pile  of  unfinished  cloth.- 
ing.  It  is  practically  all  of  the  furniture  in  the 
room  as  it  is  practically  all  of  the  family  living. 
There  are  besides  two  rag  covered  mattresses  on 
the  floor  and  a  little  rusty  stove.  The  chance 
to  put  food  upon  the  stove,  the  right  to  lie  down 
upon  the  pallets  with  a  roof  above  their  heads, 
these  the  family  must  win,  stitch  by  stitch,  from 
the  great  pile  of  clothing.  It  is  the  only  re- 
source which  they  have. 

When  she  finds  that  we  are  neither  inspectors 
nor  Society  officers  the  woman  talks  a  little. 
She  tells  us  that  she  and  her  family  are  working 
on  piece  work  from  the  sweatshops  and  that  be- 
tween them  they  are  able  to  make  about  eight 
dollars  a  week.  The  children  are  out  of  school 
a  large  part  of  the  time  —  how  can  she  help  it? 
It  is  better  for  them  to  be  out  of  school  than  to 
starve.    And   as   she   pulls   them   forward  one 


The  Cradles  of  Delinquency       57 

after  the  other,  they  do  not  look  as  if  starvation 
was  far  away. 

What  is  the  use  of  inspectors,  of  talk  of  sanita- 
tion, education,  health  laws,  in  a  room  where 
living  is  reduced  to  terms  like  these  —  the  terri- 
ble, great  pile  of  ill  paid  work?  Bad  environ- 
ment of  course  is  not  purely  a  matter  of  physical 
conditions  nor  is  it  confined  to  the  tenements. 
It  is  present  in  luxury  and  waste  and  idle  self- 
ishness, as  we  know,  as  well  as  in  poverty  and 
overwork.  The  wonder  is  only  that  under  the 
evil  living  conditions  which  society  tolerates 
and  practically  forces  on  many  of  its  members 
there  are  not  more  law  breakers  both  young  and 
old. 

What  is  the  use  of  inspectors,  of  talk  of  sanita- 
recent  investigation  showed  that  eleven  hundred 
million  dollars  were  spent  in  one  year  in  penal 
institutions  and  as  the  result  of  crime,  and  this 
was  five  hundred  millions  more  than  were  spent 
in  schools,  churches,  hospitals,  colleges  and  all 
forms  of  betterment,  religious  and  educational 
work  in  the  United  States.  Then  we  are  to  con- 
sider that  seventy-one  per  cent,  of  the  inmates 


^8      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

of  penal  institutions  are  under  voting  age.  Is 
it  not  time  that  we  were  employing  some  of  that 
eleven  hundred  million  for  prevention  —  in  the 
improvement  of  conditions  —  rather  than  in 
punishment?  Irrespective  of  moral  economy  it 
can  require  no  argument  to  show  how  much 
more  profitable  it  is  to  cultivate  producers  in- 
stead of  parasites  —  the  inmates  of  workhouses 
and  jails. 

Life  is  correspondence  with  environment  and 
we  propose  to  show  further  what  bad  environ- 
ment is  doing  for  our  children  and  the  com- 
munity. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE  STOLEN   HERITAGE 

TT  is  the  sins  of  the  city  against  the  children 
that  stand  out  most  startlingly  in  the  Chil- 
dren's Courts.  The  community  robs  the  child 
in  the  congested  districts  of  everything  a  grow- 
ing human  being  needs  for  health  of  mind  and 
body  —  and  then  it  would  punish  him  when  his 
efforts  to  win  these  chances  for  himself  bring 
him  sharply  against  the  law  of  a  grown-up 
world.  Were  there  anything  like  a  rational 
distribution  of  population,  were  the  dwellers 
in  the  tenements  not  deprived  of  light  and 
space,  were  the  tenement  children  not  desper- 
ately put  to  it  for  anything  like  normal  play, 
there  would  be  a  great  falling  off  in  the  num- 
bers that  pass  into  the  Children's  Courts,  the 
charitable,  reformatory  and  the  penal  institu- 
tions.    Until    the    millennium    there    will    be 

some  crime,  but  that  fact  does  not  excuse  the 

59 


60      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

community    from    its    responsibility    for    three- 
fourths  of  the  present  criminals. 

It  is  in  indulging  the  God-given  play  instinct 
under  proper  supervision  that  the  child  best  de- 
velops his  physical,  mental  and  moral  sides. 
When  we  force  him  to  dodge  about  the  garbage 
cans  for  his  game  of  tag,  push  him  into  black, 
ill-smelling  stairways  for  his  hide-and-seek,  how 
can  the  community  complain  when  he  does  not 
develop  into  a  good  citizen? 

Arraigned  for  the  heinous  crime  of  playing 
ball  in  the  street,  a  half-clad  lad  was  asked 
recently : 

"  What  are  the  streets  for?  " 
The  culprit,  whose  head  barely  reached  tne 
bench,  thought  hard.     He  was  white  from  starva- 
tion and  fear. 

"Automobiles,  sir,"  he  finally  faltered.  The 
Judge  straightway  sent  him  home. 

In  one  of  the  crowded  districts  last  summer  I 
saw  a  little  girl  cry  and  flee  in  terror  from  a 
fluttering  butterfly  that  by  some  strange  chance 
had  been  blown  across  from  the  Jersey  meadows. 
The  only  fields  she  had  known  were  the  cobbles 


The  Stolen  Heritage  6l 

and  asphalt,  her  only  brooks  were  the  gutter 
floods  when  the  sweepers  occasionally  turned  on 
the  fire  hydrant  to  flush  the  dirty  pavements  in 
her  block. 

In  one  group  of  thirty  Children's  Court  boys, 
sent  by  the  Big  Brother  Movement  for  a 
glimpse  of  nature  into  a  camp  maintained  by 
Groton  School  in  the  New  Hampshire  hills 
recently,  there  were  eight  who  had  never  been 
off  Manhattan  Island. 

"  Hey,  what  is  dat?  "  demanded  one  youngster 
who  was  having  his  first  glimpse  of  nature.  He 
was  pointing  in  wonder  to  an  ordinary  field 
daisy. 

"  Dat's  a  flower,"  weightily  explained  a  com- 
panion who  had  been  given  two  weeks  in  the 
country  by  a  mission  the  previous  summer. 
"An',"  he  added  with  evident  pride  in  his  wis- 
dom, "it's  got  a  name." 

"  Wat  is  it  den,  if  you're  so  smart?  "  inquired 
the  first  boy  skeptically. 

"Well,"  replied  the  botanist,  thinking  hard, 
"  dat's  a  cock-eyed  Susie !  "  And  "  cock-eyed 
Susie  "  it  remained  during  the  rest  of  the  camp. 


62      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

It  is  little  wonder  that  when  some  occasional 
charity  takes  a  handful  of  children  to  the  coun- 
try for  a  week,  children  who  have  always  lived 
in  the  city's  din,  there  are  those  who  cry :  "  It's 
so  still  it  makes  my  ears  hurt,"  and  who  beg  to 
be  taken  home.  But  so-called  charity  barely 
touches  the  remotest  edge  of  the  problem.  Real 
zeal  for  service,  the  sort  that  will  set  men  to 
taking  serious  thought  for  their  neighbors,  that 
will  give  them  decent  housing,  reasonable  condi- 
tions, playgrounds,  a  chance  in  life,  and  not 
charity  of  the  futile  sort  whose  chief  function 
seems  to  lie  in  paying  salaries,  that  is  what  we 
need.  How  many  respected  citizens  feel  that 
they  have  accomplished  the  alpha  and  omega  of 
all  charitable  requirements  by  periodically  sign- 
ing a  subscription  list  and  making  out  a  check. 
The  barrier  between  the  people  of  the  wretched 
homes  and  ourselves  is  not  a  vital  difference;  it 
is  chiefly  the  product  of  selfishness. 

Forced  to  spend  much  of  their  time  in  the 
surging,  teeming  streets,  the  children  of  the 
tenements  are  exposed  to  influences  that  do  not 
make  for  good  citizenship.     One  of  the  great 


The  Stolen  Heritage  63 

needs  of  the  big  cities  is  for  more  play  space, 
as  we  have  seen.  And  the  cities  are  awaken- 
ing to  it ;  there  are  to-day  about  300  municipali- 
ties of  more  than  5,000  population  that  are 
doing  something  toward  providing  supervised 
recreation  for  their  coming  citizens.  But 
New  York,  which  needs  playgrounds  most,  is 
sadly  behind.  When  the  streets  below  Four- 
teenth Street  were  laid  out,  there  was  little 
thought  that  one  day,  on  the  site  of  the 
old  Bowery  Farm,  the  densest  population 
in  the  civilized  world  would  be  massed.  The 
real  home,  on  whose  doorstep  the  mother 
once  sat  in  the  early  evening  with  watchful  eye 
on  her  brood  playing  in  the  opposite  lot,  is  now 
a  wretched  tenement,  darkened  by  its  towering 
new  neighbors,  cross-hatched  with  fire-escapes, 
upon  each  side.  The  common  has  gone,  there 
is  no  longer  even  a  back  yard,  but  the  children 
have  increased  till  there  are  myriads  of  them 
—  and  where,  in  all  this  swarming  world,  is 
there  a  chance  to  play?  The  congestion  that 
was  once  confined  below  Fourteenth  Street  has 
spread  and  spread  until  even  above  the  Harlem 


64      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

there  are  canons  of  streets,  packed  with  hu- 
manity, some  of  whose  warrens  offer  less  sun- 
light and  air  than  did  the  habitations  of  the 
cave  dwellers. 

More  than  half  of  the  children  who  come  into 
the  Children's  Court  of  New  York  County,  each 
year,  are  there  through  the  thwarted  desire  for 
play.  The  street  boy  who  breaks  the  law  does 
not  start  as  a  bad  boy.  The  street  may  be  a 
great  developer  of  self-reliance,  initiative  and 
courage.  But  too  often  there  is  no  opportunity 
for  the  exercise  of  these  very  qualities  except  in 
criminal  adventure.  It  is  usually  in  the  adven- 
turous spirit  that  the  boy  consents  to  "  lay  kiggy 
for  de  cop,"  that  is  to  serve  as  lookout  for 
the  policeman  when  his  companions  are  prying 
open  a  window.  It  doesn't  occur  to  him  that  he 
is  doing  wrong,  his  one  thought  has  been  ad- 
venture, play. 

But  the  children  of  the  streets  must  find  vent 
for  their  energies  in  some  direction  and  too  of- 
ten the  only  one  left  open  to  them  is  that  which 
is  criminal  in  the  eyes  of  the  law.  It  is  little 
wonder  that  the  pickpocket  Bosses,  commonly; 


The  Stolen  Heritage  65 

called  Fagins,  have  small  trouble  in  getting  re- 
cruits to  their  bands.  The  human  creature  is 
naturally  gregarious,  whether  man,  woman  or 
child;  he  cannot  be  prevented  from  associating 
with  his  kind.  If  the  man  lives  on  Fifth  Avenue 
his  association  may  be  called  a  club;  if  he  lives 
in  Minetta  Lane  it  may  be  called  a  gang.  It  is 
merely  a  difference  in  pocketbook,  education  and 
surroundings.  The  underlying  principle  is  the 
same. 

The  children  of  the  streets,  too,  develop  a 
wonderful  philosophy,  resourcefulness  and  read- 
iness of  speech.  In  one  hot  period  there  had 
seemed  to  be  an  unusually  large  number  of 
juvenile  offenders  coming  from  one  of  the  Hell's 
Kitchen  precincts  to  the  Children's  Court.  To 
learn  something  of  the  causes  of  this  local  out- 
break of  juvenile  delinquency  I  arranged  to 
meet  a  plain  clothes  man  from  Police  Headquar- 
ters in  front  of  the  Times  Building  one  midnight. 
I  was  to  go  with  him  on  a  tour  of  one  of  the 
precincts. 

After  our  first  greetings  we  noticed  a  bare- 
legged, grimy  faced  youngster  in  ragged  jump- 


66      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

ers  on  the  busy  corner  with  a  great  bundle  of 
newspapers  under  his  arm.  The  law  says  that 
no  child  under  the  age  of  fourteen  years  shall 
be  permitted  to  sell  newspapers  without  a  badge 
from  the  Department  of  Education  showing  that 
he  has  completed  a  certain  amount  of  schooling. 
In  fact  all  children  are  prohibited  from  selling 
newspapers  after  ten  o'clock  at  night.  The  of- 
ficer was  willing  to  overlook  the  hour,  but  de- 
manded of  the  industrious  newsy: 

"  Where's  your  badge?  " 

Quick  as  a  flash  the  youngster,  who  was  about 
as  big  as  a  peanut,  looked  up  into  the  big  of- 
ficer's face  and  replied  in  the  blandest  manner: 

"  Say,  Mister,  I  left  me  badge  home  on  de 
piano." 

Once  I  told  this  story  before  a  number  of 
"  students  of  sociology."  One  turned  to  a  com- 
panion and  solemnly  but  audibly  whispered: 
"  Why,  they  don't  have  pianos  in  such  homes, 
do  they?  "  It  was  just  such  a  class  as  this  that 
would  turn  to  Page  728  in  the  "  Manual  of 
Philanthropy  "  to  discover  how  to  distribute  a 
hod  of  coal. 


The  Stolen  Heritage  67 

My  plain  clothes  friend  led  the  way  over  to 
Eleventh  Avenue.  The  night  was  so  hot  that 
the  people  had  been  driven  out  from  their  ovens 
of  rooms,  and  the  roofs,  the  fire  escapes,  the 
pavements  were  littered  with  men,  women  and 
children.  The  officer  pointed  to  a  large  com- 
pany of  boys  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  street, 
who  were  still  up  and  active.  He  drew  me  into 
a  dark  hallway  with  the  remark: 

"  Boys  are  never  quite  natural  when  they 
know  they  are  being  watched."  The  same  obser- 
vation, I  find,  holds  good  about  girls  —  yes,  and 
men  and  women. 

The  youngsters  made  an  attempt  at  a  game  of 
"cops  and  robbers,"  but  it  was  too  hot,  too 
strenuous.  They  were  standing  idly  by  when 
their  leader  caught  sight  of  one  of  those  black, 
somber,  dead  horse  wagons  that  go  around  on 
summer  nights  gathering  up  the  carcasses  of 
animals  that  have  been  stricken  by  the  day's 
sun. 

"  Hats  off ! "  commanded  the  leader,  and  he 
whipped  off  his  cap  and  held  it  to  his  left  breast. 
Without  another  word  the  crowd  of  youngsters 


68      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

formed  a  platoon,  doffed  their  caps  and  in  per- 
fect line  swung  up  to  the  curb  with  military 
precision.  There  they  stood  with  bared  heads 
solemnly  bowed,  caps  to  their  breasts,  while  the 
dead  horse  wagon  rumbled  slowly  by. 

It  was  another  example  of  the  quick-witted- 
ness  of  the  street  boys  and  of  their  saving  gift 
of  humor.  Some  great  criminologists  have  told 
us  that  no  really  hardened  criminal  has  any 
sense  of  humor.  It  may  not  be  true  in  every 
case,  but  this  very  appreciation  of  the  ridiculous 
by  our  children  of  the  streets,  who  are  so  ac- 
customed to  bumping  against  sharp  corners,  is 
one  of  the  most  hopeful  signs. 

But  if  these  same  boys  had  been  helping  one 
another  over  the  fanlights  of  grocery  stores, 
committing  what  would  have  been  burglary  for 
their  elders,  it  could  not  have  been  wondered  at. 
Forced  to  the  streets  on  such  a  night,  what  was 
there  for  them  to  do?  It  was  these  very  condi- 
tions —  the  lack  of  space  to  live  and  breathe  and 
play  —  that  were  making  such  heavy  police  re- 
turns from  the  precinct  at  that  time.  Are  the 
children  who  are  forced  to  spend  a  large  part 


The  Stolen  Heritage  69 

of  their  lives  in  the  street  with  the  crowding, 
the  dirt,  the  noisy,  sleepless  nights  of  the  quar- 
ter to  be  judged  in  the  same  way  as  those  who 
have  always  had  comfortable  homes  and  the 
chance  to  lead  normal,  healthy  lives?  Notice 
their  pitiful  attempts  to  indulge  the  God-given 
instinct  to  play,  the  little  girls  sprawled  flat  on 
the  pavements  scratching  marks  with  charred 
sticks  in  the  criss-cross  game,  the  boys  trying 
to  "  skin  the  cat "  on  the  basement  rails,  knocking 
a  battered  can  with  a  crooked  stick  and  (in- 
cidentally this  is  a  violation  of  the  law)  playing 
craps  or  tormenting  the  push-cart  peddlers. 
What  a  blessing  is  the  grind-piano  when  it  oc- 
casionally comes  this  way,  what  happiness  it 
brings  to  the  hearts,  what  activity  to  the  feet 
of  the  half-clad  troops  of  children  as  they  prance 
back  and  forth  over  the  uneven  pavements  in 
time  to  its  crazy  tunes! 

But  once  in  a  while  a  boy  with  an  ingenious 
mind  finds  a  new  method  of  diversion.  For  in- 
stance, there  was  "  It's-A-Lemon,"  a  substitute 
invented  by  his  fellows  for  his  real  name,  which 
was  Isaac  Lemon,  or  "  Itzig  "  in  the  Jewish  di- 


70      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

minutive.  The  Lemon  let  himself  down  into  an 
area-way  one  day  and  after  lying  comfortably  in 
a  corner  wailed  loudly  and  piteously : 

"I'm  dead,  I'm  kilt!"  The  crowd  came 
quickly  and  naturally  thought  that  the  lad  had 
fallen  and  fractured  several  bones.  Soon  an 
ambulance  came  clanging  down  the  street. 
The  Lemon  was  placed  on  a  stretcher  and  ten- 
derly lifted  to  the  sidewalk.  As  he  was  borne 
swiftly  away  his  cries  ceased,  the  clatter  of  the 
gong  was  music  in  his  ears,  he  was  having  his 
first  ride  in  an  automobile.  Hurried  to  the 
emergency  ward  he  was  carefully  examined. 
Nothing  was  broken,  except  the  Third  Com- 
mandment, and  that  by  the  surgeon  when  he 
found  the  boy  as  sound  as  a  dollar.  The  Lemon 
was  sent  home  in  no  very  ceremonious  fashion. 
But  he  had  had  a  ride,  a  ride  with  histrionic 
accompaniments  that  made  him  a  five-minute 
hero.  The  Lemon  got  such  keen  enjoyment 
out  of  this  that  he  carried  his  operations  into 
other  districts  with  such  persistency  that  the 
hospital  authorities,  who  finally  complained 
against  him  in  the  Children's  Court,  declared 


The  Stolen  Heritage  71 

that  he  had  ridden  in  nearly  every  ambulance  in 
the  county. 

Someone  has  said  that  about  the  only  grassy 
place  most  of  the  children  would  ever  reach  was 
the  burying  ground.  Even  this  is  not  alto- 
gether true,  for  one  great  burial  place  for  chil- 
dren on  the  outskirts  of  New  York,  which  I 
visited  recently,  was  found  to  be  absolutely  bar- 
ren of  grass.  The  writer  has  often  wondered 
why  some  of  the  old,  unused  burying  grounds  in 
the  crowded  sections  of  the  town  should  not  be 
opened  up  as  play  spaces  for  the  children;  for 
one  live  boy  is  worth  a  hundred  dead  men. 
When  the  community  has  been  so  strangely  re- 
miss in  providing  recreation  spots  it  seems  in- 
consistent that  taxpayers  should  complain  of 
heavy  budgets  for  courts,  reformatories,  hos- 
pitals and  institutions  into  which  delinquents 
and  dependents  finally  drift  and  where  they 
have  to  be  maintained  at  public  expense.  In 
the  district  below  Fourteenth  Street  on  Man- 
hattan Island,  into  whose  narrow  area  are 
crowded  practically  a  million  people,  all  the  lit- 
tle make-believe  parks  put  together  aggregate 


72      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

less  than  eighty  acres.     Here  lives  a  population 
equal  to  that  of  Buffalo  and  Pittsburg  combined, 
with   only   one-eighteenth   the  area   and  about 
one-twentieth  the  park  space  of  those  two  cities. 
And  many  are  not  even  pleasant  open  places  of 
trees,  grass  and  flowers;  they  are  mere  patches 
of  asphalt  and  gravel  from  which  the  houses 
have  grudgingly  been  pushed  back  a  trifle.     In 
all  of  New  York  City  there  are  now  about  thirty 
playgrounds  which  are  maintained  by  the  De- 
partment of  Parks  throughout  the  year.     The 
city,   a   few  years   ago,   bought   a   number   of 
lots    in    the    crowded    districts    for    park    and 
playground    purposes    and    stopped    at    that, 
although  some  of  the  land  was  paid  for  at  the 
rate  of  more  than  $1,000,000  an  acre.     Official 
red  tape  and  delay  kept  the  space  idle  for  years 
after    its    purchase,    but    much    of    it   is    now 
being  developed.     One  day  we  shall  recognize 
that   playgrounds    are    quite   as    important   as 
schools   for   our  children.     The   supervising  of 
the  child's  play,  too,  will  be  held  to  be  of  great 
importance,  in  the  training  not  only  of  muscles 
but  of  character. 


The  Stolen  Heritage  73 

A  lad  from  Little  Italy  got  over  into  Central 
Park  one  day  on  a  tour  of  discovery.  It  was  a 
sultry  morning  and  as  he  neared  one  of  the  little 
lakes  the  lure  of  the  water  was  too  strong  for 
him.  He  had  been  accustomed  to  jumping  off 
the  pier  down  in  his  neighborhood.  He  peeled 
off  his  jumpers  and  clad  solely  in  nature's 
simple  garb,  dived  in.  All  this  was  in  full  view 
of  one  of  the  busiest  drives.  It  was  not  long  be- 
fore a  crowd  collected  and  a  perspiring  police- 
man came  rushing  to  the  scene.  As  the  police- 
man neared  the  bank,  Tony  struck  out  for  the 
middle,  and  to  the  delight  of  the  crowd  disported 
himself  like  a  young  porpoise.  The  policeman 
yelled,  shook  his  fist  at  Tony,  and  ordered  him 
to  come  out.  Tony  merely  rolled  over  on  his 
back,  put  his  fingers  to  his  nose,  and  wiggled 
them  vigorously.  The  policeman  ran  around 
one  edge  of  the  lake  and  Tony  circled  to  the 
other.  Lap  after  lap  the  boy  kept  that  fat  po- 
liceman going  until  it  seemed  that  he  would 
drop  of  apoplexy,  but  in  time  Tony  tired  of  his 
sport  and  condescended  to  paddle  to  shore.  The 
policeman  grabbed  him  by  the  ear  and  as  he 


74      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

hustled  him  over  to  the  spot  where  Tony  had 
dropped  his  jumpers,  he  said  unkind  things  to 
him.  Tony  was  taken  directly  to  the  Court. 
There  was  no  need  of  his  going  to  the  Society 
for  a  bath  —  he  had  had  that.  With  outraged 
feelings  the  policeman  poured  out  his  complaint 
to  the  Judge.  His  Honor  finally  turned  to 
Tony  and  asked  him  how  it  all  happened. 

Puckers  indicative  of  deep  thought  came  to 
Tony's  freckled  forehead.  Then  his  face  bright- 
ened. 

"You  see  it  jest  happen  like  dis.  Me  an' 
anuder  feller  was  play  in'  on  de  edge  o'  de  bank 
an'  I  tumbled  into  de  water.  Now,  Judge,  I  got 
all  wet  an'  I  was  afraid  to  go  home  like  dat  fer 
I  was  afraid  me  mudder  would  lick  me.  So  — " 
the  story  halted  just  an  instant  while  Tony  stole 
a  glance  at  his  maternal  parent  who  hovered 
portentously  near  — "  So  I  t'inks,  t'inks  I,  I'll 
take  off  me  clothes  an'  lay  'em  on  de  bank  in  de 
sun  to  dry.  Now,  Judge,  I  leaves  it  to  you,  I 
couldn't  stand  dere  like  dat,  could  I?  I  had 
to  get  into  de  water !  "  This  last  was  delivered 
with  an  inflection  of  voice  and  sweep  of  hand  in- 


The  Stolen  Heritage  75 

tended  to  clinch  this  appeal  to  judicial  wisdom. 

But  the  Court  was  not  easily  deceived.  The 
Judge  conferred  with  the  mother,  a  large,  cap- 
able, kindly-eyed  woman  from  Sicily.  Tony  had 
not  been  in  his  home  for  two  whole  weeks.  He 
had  been  on  "  de  hook,"  as  the  mother  declared. 

"  Tony,  you  didn't  get  that  licking,  did  you?  " 
inquired  the  Judge. 

The  culprit  hung  his  head  in  silence. 

"  We  now  propose,"  continued  the  Court, 
"  that  you  have  an  interview  with  your  mother ; 
you  can  step  right  upstairs  with  her  and  if  she 
cannot  conduct  this  interview  without  heat  of 
temper  there  are  other  capable  persons  here  who 
will  be  able  to  manage  it.  One  of  the  officers  of 
the  Court  will  be  present.  When  it  is  finished 
you  can  come  back  and  we  shall  talk  over  the 
matter  again." 

Tony  reappeared  in  the  court  room  ten 
minutes  later,  tearful  and  penitent.  He  prom- 
ised the  Judge  solemnly  he  would  never  tell  a 
lie  again,  he  would  go  to  school  every  day  when 
the  term  opened,  his  report  card  would  show 
"  Excellent "  weekly  in  each  column,  in  fact,  he 


76      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

would  be  a  paragon  of  virtue.  The  boy  was  re- 
leased on  probation  and  we  are  glad  to  record 
that  so  far  as  was  humanly  possible  he  made 
good  on  every  promise. 

It  is  refreshing  in  this  connection  to  note  that 
there  are  sensible  Judges  in  some  of  our  Chil- 
dren's Courts  who,  in  exceptional  cases,  believe 
in  the  efficacy  of  a  good  old-fashioned  spanking. 
While  the  law  does  not  usually  give  them  power 
to  order  this  treatment  they  can  sometimes  bring 
the  parent  by  a  few  wise  hints  to  volunteer  his 
services,  and  the  rite  is  performed  under  the 
watchful  eye  of  someone  connected  with  the 
Court.  It  is  an  interesting  fact,  too,  that  of 
the  boys  thus  treated  rarely  if  ever  does  one  get 
back  for  a  subsequent  offense.  While  corporal 
punishment  is  by  no  means  to  be  recommended 
generally,  there  are  occasional  cases  when  it  is 
the  best,  if  not  the  only  way,  to  work  a  cure. 

There  are  many  vacant  lots  in  the  cities  whose 
owners  would  gladly  turn  them  over  to  the  pub- 
lic as  playgrounds,  free  of  rent,  if  the  city  would 
pay  the  trifling  cost  of  supervision.  Park  and 
playground  associations  have  provided  private 


The  Stolen  Heritage  77 

funds  for  a  little  of  the  work.  But  these  or- 
ganizations are  merely  paving  the  way,  it  is  too 
big  a  proposition  for  them,  to  manage  alone. 
Under  present  laws,  some  cities  cannot  pay  an 
employ^  for  work  on  private  grounds.  A 
simple  way  to  overcome  this  difficulty  would  be 
to  lease  the  ground  from  its  owners  at  a  nominal 
rent  of  a  dollar  a  year.  There  might  then  be 
money  for  supervision  and  the  children  could 
have  their  play. 

There  should  not  be  a  schoolhouse  in  a  large 
city  that  does  not  have  a  playground  or  a  play 
roof.  One  well-known  physician,  an  expert  in 
hygiene  who  has  carefully  studied  the  situation, 
has  declared :  "  Better  a  playground  without 
a  schoolhouse  than  a  schoolhouse  without  a 
playground."  This  expert  knows  that  aside 
from  having  a  weak  physique  the  play-starved 
child  lacks  spirit  and  a  sense  of  fairness.  He 
is  a  warped  little  creature,  learning  with  diffi- 
culty perhaps,  by  rote,  but  unfit  to  go  out  into 
the  world  and  make  a  living  for  himself.  Aside 
from  the  physical  advantages  of  games,  the 
child  on  supervised   recreation  grounds  gains, 


78      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

best  of  all,  the  spirit  of  fair  play.  There  is  no 
place  where  the  idea  of  honor  is  better  taught. 
Here  the  boy  learns  the  folly  of  cheating  and 
the  wisdom  of  square  dealing. 

Those  who  oppose  appropriations  for  play 
spaces  have  yet  to  learn  that  the  most  economic 
scheme  for  the  handling  of  poverty  is  that  which 
prevents  it.  The  child  stunted  in  mind  and 
body  is  likely  to  become  a  permanent  charge  on 
the  community.  It  is  he  who  keeps  the  police- 
men, the  courts,  the  charity  departments  busy 
and  fills  the  State's  institutions.  By  giving  the 
future  citizen  something  like  a  fair  start,  a 
chance  to  develop  his  capacities,  we  are  insuring 
ourselves  against  his  crime  and  dependency. 
He  is  not  only  thus  prevented  from  becoming  a 
public  charge  but  he  develops  into  a  contributor 
to  the  public  good. 

The  results  in  future  citizenship  will  pay  the 
community  a  hundredfold  for  every  dollar  ex- 
pended toward  giving  the  children  of  the  pent-in 
districts  proper  exercise  for  their  bodies  and 
their  imaginations. 


CHAPTER  V 


THE   MILLS  OF   GREED 


There  are  thousands  hacking  at  the  branches  of  evil  to 
one  who  is  striking  at  the  root — Henry  Thoreau. 

npHE  mills  of  greed  grind  fast  in  the  packed 
*■  districts  of  the  great  cities.  The  greater 
the  herding,  the  harder  they  grind.  The  im- 
migrants form  most  of  the  grist,  the  steamship 
lines  are  the  hoppers  and  the  tenement  and 
sweatshop  owners  the  main  wheels.  The  result 
of  the  relentless  grinding  is  a  devitalized  prod- 
uct, difficult  for  the  city  to  assimilate  and  af- 
fecting its  moral  and  physical  health.  That 
much  of  this  product  finds  its  way  into  charity 
departments,  courts,  public  institutions  and  into 
premature  and  pauper  graves  is  not  the  fault  of 
the  struggling  men  and  women  of  tenements,  but 
is  due  to  the  community's  self-indulgent  apathy. 
To    too   many    citizens  no   method   of   making 

money  is  wrong  unless  it  has  violated  a  section 

79 


80      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

in  the  penal  laws  and  they  are  caught.  The 
community's  chief  weakness  lies  in  its  large  num- 
ber of  members  who  do  not  care  particularly 
what  happens  as  long  as  nothing  uncomfortable 
happens  to  them. 

There  are  brutal  truths  regarding  living  con- 
ditions in  our  great  cities  to  which  it  were 
criminal  to  continue  longer  to  close  our  eyes. 
They  cry  for  immediate  attention  and  must  re- 
ceive it,  even  though  we  have  never  before  en- 
tered earnestly  and  sympathetically  into  the  life 
of  the  community.  The  effects  of  inhuman  con- 
gestion and  the  greed  that  preys  on  it  are  per- 
haps more  immediately  apparent  in  New  York 
than  elsewhere.  There  is  no  intention  here, 
however,  to  picture  that  metropolis  as  vicious 
above  all  other  cities.  We  speak  of  New  York 
here  merely  as  an  illustration.  While  each  city 
has  its  own  problems  many  of  these  problems 
are  due  to  congestion.  There  is  always  to  be 
considered  in  connection  with  New  York  the  pe- 
culiar shape  and  position  of  its  land,  its  size 
and  its  heterogeneous  population.  Providence 
has  indeed  been  good  to  it  in  the  matter  of  nat- 


The  Mills  of  Greed  81 

ural  advantages,  water  on  every  side  and  the 
fresh  winds  that  blow  in  from  the  sea,  otherwise 
its  death  rate  which  is  now  about  three  points 
higher  than  that  of  London  would  be  much 
greater  still.  Nowhere,  however,  is  there  such 
herding  of  human  beings  into  dark,  disease-breed- 
ing tenements,  and  nowhere  such  opportunity  to 
cure  the  evils  of  congestion  and  housing  would 
men  but  take  hold. 

Does  it  mean  anything  to  you  that  in  the 
Metropolis  an  army  of  about  one-half  million 
men,  women  and  children,  has  been  packed  each 
night  into  200,000  living  rooms  having  no  win- 
dows, no  direct  light  or  ventilation,  or  not  le- 
gally lighted?  Of  this  number  50,000  rooms 
are  totally  dark.  The  Tenement  Department 
has  recently  been  busy  chopping  holes  into  some 
of  the  dark  cells  of  brick  at  the  rate  of  4,000  a 
month  but  it  will  never  master  the  situation 
until  the  community  has  roused  itself.  The 
present  Commissioner,  too,  has  with  commend- 
able activity  been  ripping  school  sinks  out  of  the 
malodorous  courts,  and  he  now  declares  there  is 
not    a    school    sink    on   occupied   premises    on 


82      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

Manhattan  Island.  There  are  10,000  deaths  a 
year  in  New  York  City  from  tuberculosis  alone 
and  28,000  new  cases  of  the  "  white  plague  "  de- 
velop every  twelve  months.  Tuberculosis,  too,  is 
a  preventable  disease.  Two-thirds  of  our  con- 
sumption is  bred  in  the  tenements,  much  of  it  in 
those  same  black  rooms. 

If,  year  after  year,  in  one  little  district  10,000 
men  were  killed  in  battle  and  28,000  more  were 
cruelly  wounded,  the  world  would  arise  and 
stop  it.  But  because  these  10,000  men,  women 
and  children,  go  out  quietly  in  their  little  black 
holes  and  there  are  no  dramatic  features,  the 
community  sits  supinely  by.  Of  all  the  child 
cripples  in  New  York  more  than  ninety  per  cent, 
owe  their  affliction  to  bone  tuberculosis.  It  is 
nobody's  business,  at  least  it  is  not  sufficiently 
the  community's  business,  to  insist  on  living 
conditions  that  would  put  an  end  to  the  white 
death. 

Oh,  yes,  there  are  sanitaria,  church  roof 
camps,  free  dispensaries,  but  all  these  begin  at 
the  wrong  end  of  the  problem  —  they  are  puny 
palliatives  and  barely  touch  the  edges  —  they 


The  Mills  of  Greed  83 

usually  begin  after  the  damage  is  done.  Such 
futile  methods  will  never  reach  the  real  cause. 
There  are  other  ailments,  physical  and  moral, 
which  sap  the  city's  vitality  and  which  in  the  ag- 
gregate are  much  more  deadly  than  tuberculo- 
sis. The  startling  thing  is,  it  is  not  illegal  to 
have  conditions  which  produce  them.  These 
diseases,  physical  and  moral,  could  be  effectively 
prevented  if  the  community  would  but  insist  on 
it. 

The  crowding  of  Manhattan  Island  is  two- 
thirds  greater  than  that  in  any  European  city 
and  this  condition  is  rapidly  being  carried  into 
the  Bronx.  The  real  estate  speculators  are 
quietly,  but  effectively,  forcing  their  legal  right 
to  kill  off  men,  women  and  children  in  the  out- 
lying districts  in  the  same  way  that  they  have 
in  Manhattan.  They  quite  naturally  point  out 
that  for  speculative  purposes  this  sort  of  murder 
has  been  legalized  below  the  Bronx  and  ask  why 
that  right  should  not  be  extended.  There  are 
areas  on  Manhattan  Island  where  human  beings 
are  massed  in  at  the  rate  of  1,400  to  the  acre. 
In  the  lower  part  of  the  Bronx  there  is  an  area 


84      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

which  has  a  population  of  more  than  1,000 
to  the  acre.  One  new  house  there,  according  to 
a  statement  of  the  Tenement  House  Commis- 
sioner,  has  seventeen  families  on  a  floor. 

Private  interests  are  fast  spreading  this  rate 
of  congestion,  for  the  greater  the  crowd  the 
higher  the  rents.  That  is  the  reason  a  block 
of  tenement  property  in  the  congested  districts 
of  Manhattan  Island  is  worth  a  million  and  a 
half  of  dollars.  One  day  we  shall  cease  to  put 
these  things  —  murder,  starvation,  and  disease 

—  in  terms  of  dollars  and  cents,  and  we  shall 
translate  them  into  terms  of  men,  women  and 
children.  But  perhaps  these  statements,  even 
though  they  deal  with  life  and  death,  do  not  ap- 
peal as  would  a  concrete  instance. 

A  hollow-eyed  mother  on  whom  is  the  pallor 
of  the  white  death  steps  weakly  to  the  little  plat- 
form in  front  of  the  Judge's  bench  in  the  Child- 
ren's Court.  She  leads  the  father,  who  is  nearly 
blind  from  tuberculosis.  The  five  children  of 
the  pair  —  there  is  no  race  suicide  in  this  class 

—  are  already  standing  within  the  rail.  As 
they  see  the  mother  they  set  up  a  joyous  clamor 


The  Mills  of  Greed  85 

and  one  little  girl  proudly  extends  a  foot  to 
show  a  new  pair  of  shoes  with  which  her  bare 
feet  were  shod  at  the  Society's  rooms.  All 
there  had  been  between  this  four-year-old  and 
absolute  nakedness,  when  the  officer  visited  the 
hole  in  Mulberry  Street  in  which  they  lived,  was 
a  pair  of  torn  gingham  jumpers.  The  clothing 
of  the  four  boys,  who  range  in  age  from  three  to 
eleven,  had  been  quite  as  scant. 

The  mother  grasps  the  little  girl  and  Gui- 
seppe,  the  culprit,  in  a  single  embrace.  She 
grows  suddenly  faint,  the  effort  is  too  much.  It 
was  Guiseppe's  theft  of  copper  wire  that  brought 
the  plight  of  this  family  to  official  attention.  It 
is  the  kindest  thing  that  happens  to  some  chil- 
dren to  get  arrested.  A  clerk  in  the  offices  on 
the  top  floor  of  Police  Headquarters  had  seen 
the  boy  on  an  adjoining  roof  cutting  telephone 
lines.  Within  a  few  minutes  detectives  pounced 
down  on  him  and  he  was  on  his  way  to  the 
Society. 

The  officer  who  went  to  Mulberry  Street  to 
notify  the  parents,  found  the  family  of  seven 
starving  in  two  black,  foul  rooms  —  but  not  too 


86      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

black  nor  too  foul  to  prevent  the  landlord  from 
extracting  eleven  dollars  a  month  for  rent  as 
long  as  the  mother  could  keep  her  frail  fingers 
going  at  sweatshop  sewing.  But  finally  her 
fingers  failed  her.  The  father's  affliction,  due 
to  the  tenement,  had  long  kept  him  from  work. 
He  had  come  here  a  strong,  sturdy,  farm  laborer 
from  a  vine-clad  cottage  in  Sicily.  Guiseppe 
was  the  only  child  whose  help  counted  for  much. 
He  sold  newspapers  and  sewed  on  buttons  far 
into  the  night.  It  is  true  that  the  seven-  and 
five-year-old  boys  had  helped  with  the  bastings 
of  the  piece  work  often  until  they  were  no  longer 
able  to  hold  up  their  heavy  heads.  Yes,  even 
children  of  three  are  often  forced  into  this 
slavery.  The  blood  rents,  the  wage  pittances, 
force  parents  thus  to  use  their  children. 

The  sweatshop  owners  taking  advantage  of 
the  over-supply  of  labor,  of  the  poverty,  the 
sharp  need  of  the  people  in  the  crowded  dis- 
tricts, are  absolute  dictators  as  to  wages. 
Sometimes  they  pay  twelve  cents  a  pair  for  fin- 
ishing men's  pants,  sometimes  they  pay  four 
cents  a  dozen  pairs  for  finishing  boys'  pants. 


The  Mills  of  Greed  87 

There  is  no  wage  too  low  for  them  to  offer  and 
usually  no  wage  too  low  to  be  accepted.  That 
the  sweatshop  goods  often  go  germ-laden  out  of 
these  homes  to  the  public  does  not  concern  the 
sweatshop  owner.     He  gets  the  work  cheap. 

When  the  janitor's  call  for  the  rent  was  but 
ten  days  off  Guiseppe  was  sent  first  to  pawn  his 
mother's  shawl,  then  the  two-year-old's  dress. 
The  quilts  and  blankets  went  last,  for  in  the  ab- 
sence of  other  clothing  and  fire,  the  month  be- 
ing March,  the  children  could  be  kept  in  bed. 
On  his  last  trip  to  the  pawnshop  Guiseppe 
thought  of  the  copper  wire  and  determined  to 
save  the  family.  It  is  easy  to  moralize  about 
the  thief,  but  what  about  ourselves  had  we  been 
in  Guiseppe's  place? 

Instead  of  charging  Guiseppe  with  theft  a 
complaint  of  improper  guardianship  was  drawn 
in  which  all  the  children  were  included.  It  was 
an  improper  guardianship  that  the  parents 
could  not  help,  it  was  the  community's  improper 
guardianship.  For  the  State  is  the  ultimate 
parent  of  the  child. 

The  Court  explained  in  as  kindly  a  way  as 


88      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

possible  that  it  was  not  because  Guiseppe  had 
stolen  the  wire  that  the  children  were  to  be  sent 
to  an  institution  in  the  country,  but  because  the 
parents,  with  their  afflictions,  were  not  able  to 
care  for  them.  As  the  Court's  order  was  inter- 
preted and  bore  in  on  the  pair,  the  mother  arose, 
flung  out  her  arms  and  with  a  scream  sank  back 
fainting  into  her  chair.  The  blind  father  grop- 
ingly tried  to  help  her. 

That  scream  is  heard  often  in  the  Children's 
Courts.  It  is  a  pity  that  it  cannot  also  be 
heard  in  the  legislative  halls,  or  that  it  does  not 
echo  in  the  uptown  drawing-rooms  of  some  of 
the  tenement  owners. 

There  is  nothing  cheap  in  many  of  the  tene- 
ments except  human  life.  Light,  air,  water,  heat, 
the  elemental  things  cost  blood  money.  Their  in- 
habitants are  forced  to  pay  far  more  proportion- 
ately than  the  middle  class  or  those  who  live  in 
luxurious  homes.  The  average  rent  in  the 
congested  districts  is  five  dollars  a  month 
for  a  room  in  these  over-packed  barracks. 
For  the  thousands  that  fall  into  the  clutches 
of    the    sweatshop    owner    this    rental    means 


The  Mills  of  Greed  89 

not  only  the  crowding  in  of  the  family,  the 
taking  of  lodgers  to  the  peril  of  the  children, 
but  also  midnight  labor,  pain,  suffering,  and 
perhaps  death.  Counted  by  the  cost  at  which 
they  are  won,  the  dollars  of  the  poor  are  price- 
less. In  return  what  do  they  and  their  chil- 
dren get? 

A  family  whose  scant  belongings  a  city 
marshal  has  dumped  into  the  street  for  non- 
payment of  rent  is  brought  to  the  Children's 
Court.  The  father,  mother  and  three  younger 
children  had  been  found  seated  on  the  rickety 
furniture  in  the  rain.  They  were  afraid  to  leave 
it  lest  it  be  stolen.  An  older  boy  and  girl  had 
gone  into  another  block  to  beg  and  there  were 
arrested.  This  family  has  been  forced  to  pay 
$13.50  a  month  for  two  rooms  in  an  "  improved 
apartment."  The  rent  has  been  increased  five 
dollars  a  month  in  two  years,  the  last  increase 
having  been  made  when  the  flats  were  "  im- 
proved." Work  in  the  sweatshops  had  grown 
slack,  the  tailor's  scanty  wages  had  stopped  and 
the  wife  had  been  ill.  In  company  with  an  of- 
ficer I  went  down  into  Forsyth  Street  to  see 


90      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

what  manner  of  improvements  these  were. 
The  "  To-Let "  sign  outside  advertised :  "  Hand- 
somely Decorated,  Toilet  and  Bath  in  Each 
Apartment."  A  smear  of  gaudy  paint  over 
years'  accumulation  of  dirt  in  the  narrow  en- 
trance constituted  the  handsome  decorations. 
The  hall  was  so  black  that  before  we  reached  the 
stairs  the  beauties  of  the  vivid  decorations  were 
lost.  We  groped  for  the  rickety  banister  in  the 
Stygian  darkness.  The  grinding  of  dirt  under 
our  feet  told  of  the  conditions  of  the  steps. 
The  law  says  that  light  must  burn  in  these  hall- 
ways but  gas  costs  money  and  the  tenement 
landlord  believed  in  economy.  That  we  might 
see  one  of  these  "  improved  apartments "  in- 
habited we  knocked  at  a  door. 

A  ragged  little  girl  with  bare  feet  and  tousled 
red  hair  opened  the  door,  peered  out  into  the 
darkness  and  called  shrilly: 

"What  yer  want?" 

We  could  see  her  plainly  enough,  for  at  the 
back  of  the  room  which  served  the  double  duty 
of  sleeping  place  and  kitchen  there  was  a  win- 
dow which  actually  let  in  daylight.    At  once  it 


The  Mills  of  Greed  91 

was  apparent  where  a  part  of  that  $13.50  went 
—  this  flat  was  exactly  like  the  one  from  which 
the  unfortunate  family  had  been  evicted.  There 
were  two  shake-downs  on  the  floor.  An  over- 
powering steamy  odor  of  cabbage  came  from  a 
pot  on  the  stove. 

The  officer  explained  that  we  wanted  to  see 
the  apartment.  The  little  girl  was  glad  of  the 
opportunity  to  show  all  of  the  "  improvements." 
Evidently  they  had  lived  in  a  much  worse  place 
before. 

"  It's  a  grand  house  we  live  in  now,"  she  said 
proudly.     We  asked  to  see  the  bathroom. 

"  There  ain't  no  bathroom,  but  there's  the 
bath,"  and  she  pointed  at  the  kitchen  tub. 

"  But  that's  a  wash  tub,"  we  replied. 

"  Yes,  and  it's  a  bath  tub  too,"  she  answered, 
plainly  showing  her  injured  feelings.  She 
mounted  a  chair  and  pulled  out  a  wooden  parti- 
tion that  divided  the  tub.  A  lot  of  dirty  clothes 
were  in  soak. 

"  Ye  see,  when  yer  wants  to  take  a  bath  ye 
pulls  de  board  out  and  den  ye  steps  inter  de 
tub  just  likes  dis,"  and  she  nimbly  climbed  in 


92      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

and  pranced  about  on  the  wet  clothes.  "  Ye 
gets  lots  of  room  dis  way.  Gee,  I  takes  a  bath 
pretty  near  every  month  now."  Remember,  this 
was  an  "  improved  "  apartment. 

The  toilet  was  found  to  be  a  cubby-hole  be- 
tween the  kitchen,  which  was  really  the  light 
room,  and  the  "  parlor  "  which  had  no  light  save 
that  which  came  from  a  little  porthole  that 
opened  on  a  narrow  court.  The  toilet  was  out 
of  order  and  the  officer  told  me  that  the  land- 
lord of  this  house,  who  owned  considerable  other 
tenement  property,  had  been  arrested  recently 
when  it  was  found  that  the  ventilating  pipes  of 
the  toilets  in  his  buildings,  instead  of  leading 
to  the  roofs  and  the  open  air,  had  in  each  closet 
simply  been  carried  to  the  dead  wall.  It  is  a 
common  thing  for  such  "  improvements  "  to  be 
made  in  tenement  property  and  this  always 
brings  an  increase  in  rent.  There  are  only  250 
inspectors  in  the  Tenement  House  Department 
of  New  York  City  with  103,000  tenements  to  be 
inspected.  So  the  number  of  blind  ventilating 
pipes  and  fake  improvements  that  may  go  un- 
discovered is  great. 


The  Mills  of  Greed  93 

The  red-headed  little  girl  in  answer  to  a  ques- 
tion as  to  how  many  lodgers  there  were  sud- 
denly grew  cautious. 

"  Ye  ain't  inspectors,  are  ye?  " 

Keassured  on  that  point  she  told  us  that  besides 
her  father,  mother  and  three  children  three  men 
slept  in  the  two  rooms  at  night,  that  is,  four  per- 
sons in  a  room.  That  is  not  nearly  so  bad  as  the 
situation  in  many  homes.  The  law  as  it  stands 
to-day  allows  three  persons  to  live  in  one  room. 

There  came  to  mind  the  case  of  a  little  girl 
not  much  larger  than  our  hostess  of  that  day,  who 
was  brought  into  Court  after  she  had  strangled 
her  newly  born  baby  of  which  one  of  the  lodgers 
had  been  the  father.  Yes,  and  the  case  of  another 
child  who  had  contracted  an  incurable  disease 
from  one  of  the  lodgers  that  her  family  had  been 
forced  to  harbor  to  help  in  meeting  the  monthly 
rent.  Cases  growing  out  of  the  defilement  of 
innocent  children  by  lodgers  are  common  in  the 
Children's  Courts  and  these  form  another  fearful 
count  against  the  community  which  permits  the 
inhuman  herding  in  the  tenements.  It  was  with 
such  thoughts  that  we  descended  the  black  stairs 


94      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

and   left   the   "  improved   apartments "    of   the 
Forsyth  Street  house. 

So  often  visitors  at  the  Children's  Courts,  look- 
ing over  the  dirty,  dull,  hopeless,  careworn  par- 
ents, who  flock  there  each  day  because  their  chil- 
dren have  been  arrested,  observe :  "  There's  no  ex- 
cuse for  their  being  dirty;  soap  and  water  are 
cheap."  In  answer  to  this  the  visitors  have  been 
asked:  "Do  you  know  the  real  tenements?" 
The  reply  as  a  rule  is  to  the  effect  that  they 
have  read  about  them,  or  once  visited  a  Bowery 
mission  or  have  ridden  through  Chinatown  on 
top  of  a  sight-seeing  bus.  It  may  be  that  one  of 
the  visitors  has  had  a  friend,  a  settlement  worker, 
who  lived  in  a  "  model  tenement."  It  is  always 
a  source  of  wonder  to  the  writer  why  so  few 
"  model  tenements  "  house  the  people  for  whose 
benefit  they  are  supposed  to  have  been  built. 
The  tenants,  for  the  most  part,  are  would-be  Bo- 
hemians or  settlement  workers  who  are  faddists 
and  who  love  to  write  home  to  the  folks  in  Il- 
linois and  tell  them  that  in  their  heroic  efforts 
for  human  uplift  they  have  gone  to  live  "  right  in 
the  slums."     Some  of  their  "  slum  "  flats,  how- 


The  Mills  of  Greed  95 

ever,  possess  an  atmosphere  that  would  hardly 
encourage  the  free  visiting  of  real  tenement 
neighbors. 

As  to  cleanliness  in  the  tenements,  how  many 
of  us  would  long  be  particular  about  the  ap- 
pearance of  our  linen  if  we  had  to  sleep  in  our 
clothing  night  after  night?  Would  we  regularly 
scour  our  faces  and  scrub  our  teeth  if,  to  get  a 
drop  of  water,  we  had  to  wait  long  in  a  bucket- 
bearing  brigade  at  a  common  sink  in  a  public 
hall,  each  morning,  when  every  second  counted 
on  the  sweatshop  piece  work  and  a  minute  lost 
might  mean  eviction  or  starvation  for  our  chil- 
dren? No,  in  such  a  grind  there  is  little  chance 
for  cleanliness  and  there  is  ever  an  enforced  dis- 
regard of  self-respect. 

A  little  colored  boy,  as  black  as  African  night, 
stood  in  the  hallway  of  the  Children's  Court  one 
day  waiting  for  his  case  to  be  called.  He  had 
an  expansive  smile  and  his  white  teeth  attracted 
my  attention.     I  stopped  and  asked  his  name. 

"  Walter  Scott,"  he  replied,  with  pride. 

"What  are  you  laughing  about?"  I  asked. 

It  was  then  discovered  that  he  stuttered. 


96      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

"  De  fun-fun-fun-funniest  thing  hap-hap-hap- 
pened  to  me,  Mist-Mist-Mister,"  he  managed  to 
say,  his  bright  smile  never  failing.  "  Dey  took 
me  up  to  de  Ger-Ger-Gerries  (a  name  that  many 
children  have  for  the  Society)  and  dey  give  me  a 
ba-ba-ba-bath.  An'  I  blush-blush  blush-blushed, 
all  over  ma  face." 

And  I  verily  believe  that  the  little  colored  boy 
did  blanch,  if  not  blush,  at  this,  his  first  bath,  as 
he  confessed  to  me  it  was.  It  should  be  said 
here,  however,  that  the  tenements  occupied  by  the 
colored  people  are  usually  much  better  kept  than 
those  of  the  alien  whites. 

The  question  is  frequently  asked,  by  people 
who  do  not  know  the  real  conditions,  why 
the  foreigners  do  not  move  on  to  the  open  places 
and  avoid  the  congestion  and  the  extortionate 
rents.  They  would  had  they  the  means.  The 
trouble  is  that  thousands,  yes,  and  hundreds  of 
thousands,  do  not  bring  enough  money  to  carry 
them  beyond  New  York.  No  immigrant  is  al- 
lowed to  remain  in  a  Canadian  city  unless  he  can 
show  the  immigrant  inspectors  of  that  Domin- 
ion at  least  fifty  dollars.     It  would  be  wise  were 


C   C 

£  E 

o  1> 

c 

o    4J 
M  ?» 

.5  <-» 

3  " 


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?. '5. 


T3  ^ 

X 


The  Mills  of  Greed  97 

such  a  law  enacted  here.  And  yet,  what  a  clamor 
of  protest  arose  against  the  Commissioner  at 
Ellis  Island  because  he  arbitrarily  set  twenty-five 
dollars  as  the  amount  which  each  newly  arrived 
alien  must  bring  with  him. 

Often  their  own  countrymen  prey  on  the  help- 
less immigrants  and  are  the  hardest  landlords 
and  employers.  As  illustrating  this,  the  very 
day  these  lines  were  written  a  woman  came  into 
Court  to  complain  that  she  was  no  longer  able 
to  care  for  her  children  because  her  husband's 
employer,  who  came  from  their  same  province 
in  Italy,  would  not  pay  him  more  than  $5.50  a 
week  for  twelve  hours'  work  each  day.  Her  hus- 
band was  an  able-bodied  man,  but  because  of  the 
over-supply  of  labor  was  unable  to  get  work  else- 
where. 

That  the  community  has  denied  the  right  of  the 
people  in  the  congested  districts  to  have  children 
is  apparent  from  the  brutal  but  frank  statement 
which  appears  in  a  recent  annual  report  of  the 
Association  For  Improving  The  Condition  Of  The 
Poor. 

"  The  birth  of  a  child,"  it  is  stated,   "  is  a 


98      The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

serious  menace  to  the  prosperity  of  the  ordinary 
laborer's  family,  and  in  the  case  of  the  unskilled 
poor  in  our  great  cities  the  birth  of  a  second  or 
third  child,  even  in  prosperous  times,  usually 
brings  disaster  to  the  home." 

This  is  a  fact  that  is  not  yet  comprehended 
by  the  great  mass  of  immigrants.  They  still 
believe  that  children  are  blessings  and  in 
this  are  more  human  than  some  of  their  richer 
neighbors.  Our  citizens  of  to-morrow  being 
for  the  most  part  reenforced  from  this  poor 
class,  the  State  as  the  ultimate  parent  owes  them 
a  chance  for  work  and  a  decent  dwelling  place. 

Less  than  200,000  persons  own  all  the  real  es- 
tate of  New  York  City.  There  are  eight  owners 
alone  whose  holdings  aggregate  in  value  about 
$150,000,000,  the  total  area  of  these  holdings  be- 
ing 264.8  acres.  The  mortality  and  crime  rates  in 
any  district  vary  directly  with  the  density  of  the 
population  just  as  it  has  been  proved  that  the 
size  and  weight  of  children  at  a  given  age  are  in 
direct  relation  to  the  number  living  in  a  room. 
The  fewer  in  a  room  the  taller  and  healthier  they 
are. 


The  Mills  of  Greed  99 

It  is  axiomatic  that  dark  rooms  are  never  kept 
clean  and  there  can  be  no  wonder  that  they  breed 
disease  and  crime.  One  expert  who  was  before 
the  recent  Congestion  Commission  has  declared 
that  not  even  in  St.  Petersburg,  in  heathen  Can- 
ton, or  Bombay,  was  there  such  great  congestion, 
nor  did  the  poor  suffer  so  much  from  excessive 
rents  as  in  our  metropolis. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  HOPPERS 

A  BOUT  one  million  human  beings  are  shuttled 
**■  *•  into  the  country  each  year  by  the  steamships. 
Thousands  of  them  congest  in  the  nation's  gate- 
way. By  the  gateway  New  York  is  meant,  for, 
unfortunately,  most  immigrants  are  led  to  believe 
this  the  only  entrance  to  the  country.  It  is  eas- 
iest for  the  transatlantic  companies  to  unload 
the  human  freight  in  this  port.  It  is  a  stimu- 
lated, artificial  immigration  that  is  over-crowd- 
ing the  great  cities,  particularly  New  York  and 
its  municipal  near  neighbors.  This  congestion 
is  greatly  responsible  for  the  poverty,  crime, 
wretchedness  and  needless  mortality  in  these 
communities. 

The  new  arrivals  come  here  expecting  to  find 
an  asylum  from  race  and  religious  persecution, 
a  refuge  from  poverty  and  famine,  or  a  chance  to 
better   their   condition.     Notaries,   postmasters, 

IOO 


The  Hoppers  10 1 

school  mistresses,  any  who  have  persuasive  power 
and  some  following,  act  as  agents  to  sell  steam- 
ship tickets  —  for  they  get  a  commission.  They 
often  induce  the  families  to  mortgage  their  little 
possessions  and  to  start  for  this  country  with 
funds  insufficient  to  carry  them  beyond  Ellis  Is- 
land. More  than  half  a  million  immigrants 
brought  with  them,  in  the  year  which  ended 
June  30th,  1909,  less  than  twenty-five  dollars  a 
head.  The  Commissioner  at  Ellis  Island  has 
since  laid  down  the  wise  rule  that  each  arriving 
immigrant  must  show  not  less  than  twenty-five 
dollars.  A  great  cry  has  gone  up  over  this  re- 
quirement and  yet  it  is  not  enough;  for  those 
who  expect  to  remain  in  the  cities  the  amount 
should  be  doubled. 

Having  no  means  to  reach  the  open  places 
where  they  are  really  needed,  many  thousands 
of  the  incoming  horde  are  stranded  in  the  gate- 
way each  year,  and  are  forced  into  a  bitter  slav- 
ery. The  immigrant  has  been  exploited  from 
the  moment  he  first  began  to  deal  with  the  agent 
on  the  other  side,  and  here,  unable  to  get  beyond 
the  metropolis,  he  is  crushed  between  the  wheels, 


102    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

on  the  one  hand  the  extortionate  landlord,  on 
the  other  the  greed  of  the  sweatshop  manager 
or  the  padrone.  The  result  is  the  heaping  up 
of  a  devitalized  product  that  is  unwholesome  for 
municipality  or  nation. 

But,  someone  will  say,  many  immigrants  do 
make  money,  they  do  better  themselves.  Yes, 
otherwise  three  hundred  million  dollars  of  our 
country's  money  would  not  be  sent  back  to  Eu- 
rope each  year.  But  even  though  the  dollar 
blinds  our  eyes,  that  is  no  excuse  for  indiffer- 
ence to  the  cruelty  that  meets  the  weaker  ones 
of  the  insweeping  flood.  How  hypocritical  the 
magnanimity  of  our  much  vaunted  open  door 
when  we  sit  quietly  by  while  the  robbing  of  these 
victims,  helplessly  stalled  in  our  gateway,  goes 
relentlessly  on. 

What  right  have  we  to  complain  that  so  much 
of  our  country's  money,  a  large  part  of  it  earned 
by  blood  sweat,  is  sent  back  to  Europe  each  year 
and  that  so  many  of  the  successful  immigrants 
refuse  to  become  American  citizens?  America 
has  always  boasted  herself  as  a  refuge  for  the 
oppressed.     But  as  we  have  grown,  our  increased 


The  Hoppers  103 

responsibilities  to  the  new  arrivals  have  been 
wholly  disregarded. 

There  is  no  argument  here  against  the  open 
door;  but  instead  of  just  one  door  many  should 
be  used  and  the  immigrants,  instead  of  being  al- 
lowed to  congest  in  the  big  cities,  should  be  moved 
on  to  the  open  country  that  really  needs  them 
and  where  they  would  have  a  fairer  chance. 

The  call  of  the  West :  "  Homes  for  the  home- 
less; food  for  the  hungry;  work  for  the  unem- 
ployed; land  for  the  landless;  gold  for  the  penni- 
less; freedom  for  the  enslaved  and  room  for  all," 
may  tingle  the  blood;  but  when  the  immigrants 
find  themselves  huddled  into  an  East  Side  cellar 
or  into  the  back  room  of  a  rear  tenement,  already 
crowded,  their  dreams  turn  to  a  despair  that  is 
not  productive  of  good  citizenship.  They  may 
have  to  live  for  weeks  on  the  charity  of  relations 
and  friends  before  any  work  is  found.  Then 
there  are  no  wages  too  low  for  them  to  grasp. 
In  the  fierce  struggle  for  existence  both  father  and 
mother  must  fight  in  the  bread-winning.  Tired 
eyes,  empty  stomachs  and  harassed  souls  do  not 
usually  go   with  the  best  parental   care.    Too 


104    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

often  the  children  are  forced  to  drudgery  or  else 
run  wild  in  the  streets. 

There  is  no  place  where  the  effects  of  all  this 
are  more  apparent  than  in  the  Children's  Courts 
and  the  Charities  Departments.  The  crushing 
conditions  of  the  new  environment  have  in  thou- 
sands of  cases  rendered  the  parents  helpless  in 
the  upbringing  of  their  children.  To  the  struggle 
for  existence,  relentless  everywhere,  are  added 
the  difficulties  of  new  laws,  new  customs  and 
a  strange  language,  great  handicaps  in  them- 
selves. 

A  common  tongue  is  the  strongest  bond  of  the 
alien  colonies.  The  parents  have  reached  a 
mental  stage  where  it  is  difficult  to  learn  a  new 
language.  It  frequently  happens  that  parents 
come  into  court  who  have  lived  here  fifteen  or 
twenty  years  and  who  yet  will  not  trust  them- 
selves to  speak  a  word  of  their  adopted  country's 
language.  Children,  on  the  other  hand,  quickly 
take  up  the  new  tongue  and  adapt  themselves  to 
new  conditions.-  They  are  the  interpreters  and 
too  often  the  dictators  in  their  families  and  come 
to  feel  a  superiority  to  the  bewildered  parents. 


The  Hoppers  105 

The  boy  finds  he  can  impose  on  his  father  who 
perhaps  was  a  czar  in  his  own  household  back 
in  Kussia,  the  girl  sees  that  she  can  readily  de- 
ceive her  mother  who  was  so  watchful  of  her 
morals  in  the  old  home.  Their  elders'  strict  no- 
tions of  filial  respect,  of  correct  conduct,  from 
which  the  children  would  not  have  dared  depart 
in  their  native  country,  are  flouted.  The  boy's 
new  companions  of  the  dark  stairways,  mal- 
odorous courts  and  teeming  streets  too  often 
teach  him  to  evade  the  truant  officer.  They  also 
bring  him  to  believe  that  the  "  cop  "  is  his  worst 
enemy.  The  girls  are  constantly  exposed 
through  contact  with  the  men  lodgers  whom  the 
family  is  forced  for  the  rent's  sake  to  huddle  into 
their  narrow  rooms  at  night.  The  inexorable 
struggle  for  bread  has  so  filled,  every  working 
moment  of  the  parents  that  they,  perhaps,  have 
not  seen  the  danger  until  it  was  too  late. 

Again,  the  hard  usage  to  which  they  have  been 
subjected  sometimes  blunts  the  moral  sensibilities 
of  the  parent.  The  struggle  for  bread  has  been 
so  fierce  that  they  often  value  their  .offspring 
solely  for  the  child's  money  making  ability.     If 


106    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

the  State  insists  on  making  Guiseppi  go  to  school 
and  will  not  allow  him  to  work  until  he  is  four- 
teen, then  they  argue  that  the  State  should  take 
care  of  him  until  that  time.  Until  recently,  it 
has  been  a  common  practice  for  such  parents  to 
try  to  rid  themselves  of  their  children  by  sending 
them  to  the  "  weissenhaus "  or  the  "  college." 
Any  institution,  charitable  or  reformatory,  was 
known  to  a  certain  class  as  a  "  college."  When, 
on  trumped  up  cases  against  their  own  offspring, 
they  had  succeeded  in  having  them  sent  to  a  re- 
formatory, they  were  as  proud  as  more  fortunate 
parents  would  have  been  in  having  placed  a  son 
at  Harvard  or  Yale.  The  children  were  fed  and 
clothed  in  the  public  institutions  and  when  they 
came  out  had  some  knowledge  of  a  trade. 

Laws  have  been  passed  in  some  States  which 
give  the  Justices  in  the  Children's  Courts  the 
right  to  place,  at  discretion,  the  father  of  any 
child  committed  under  an  order  to  pay  to  the 
State  what  the  child's  maintenance  costs  in 
the  institution.  This  has  put  a  check  on  the 
trumped-up  stories. 

Let  it  be  said  here  in  justice  to  the  immigrants 


The  Hoppers  107 

that  the  majority  of  parents  in  the  alien  colonies 
are  anxious  to  do  the  best  they  can  for  their 
children.  Considering  the  living  conditions  into 
which  they  are  forced  the  great  wonder  is  that 
they  do  so  well.  In  these  dense  colonies,  where 
a  common  foreign  tongue  is  spoken,  barriers  are 
built  about  the  people  that  are  not  easily  pene- 
trated by  our  ideas  of  well-being  and  good  cit- 
izenship. 

A  swarthy  Sicilian  applied  at  the  Children's 
Court  recently  for  "a  ticket." 

"What  sort  of  a  ticket?"  demanded  a  clerk. 

"  Me  want  to  killa  man,"  was  his  bland  reply. 

To  fathom  the  mental  operation  prompting  this 
request  required  an  interpreter.  A  neighbor  and 
fellow  countryman,  it  seemed,  had  taunted  him 
to  a  point  of  frenzy.  He  had  determined  on 
blood  vengeance.  But  he  wanted  to  proceed 
strictly  in  accordance  with  his  notion  of  Ameri- 
can law.  Somewhere  he  had  heard  that  judges 
could  issue  revolver  permits.  If  official  permis- 
sion to  carry  a  pistol  was  to  be  obtained,  he  rea- 
soned, certainly  there  went  with  it  the  legal  right 
to  use  the  weapon.     This  prospective  citizen,  on 


108    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

legal  murder  bent,  had  been  in  the  country  three 
years,  all  of  which  had  been  spent  in  Little  Italy. 
It  took  a  lot  of  persuasion  to  convince  him  that 
under  the  circumstances  no  judge  would  be  in- 
clined to  grant  him  permission  to  carry  a  weapon 
and  even  were  that  permission  given  no  right 
could  go  with  it  to  shoot  down  one  of  his  fellows. 
But  far  more  serious  than  the  distorted  notions 
which  these  crowded  people  of  the  alien  colonies 
get  as  to  American  citizenship,  is  the  fearful 
slavery  into  which  hordes  of  them  are  forced. 
The  landlord  and  sweatshop  owner  each  knows 
that  the  greater  the  crowd  the  higher  will  be  the 
rents  and  the  lower  the  wages  —  each  in  his  own 
way   reaps    profit,     The   owner   of   the   chattel 
slave  was  looking  only  to  his  own  interest  when 
he  saw  that  his  black  property  had  a  comfortable 
bed  in  which  to  sleep  at  night,  a  weather-proof 
roof  over  his  head  and  wholesome,  sustaining 
food.     The  men  who  drive  the  immigrant  slave 
do  not  worry  about  these  things ;  they  know  that 
for  every  man,  woman  or  child  that  drops  out 
through  starvation  or  exhaustion  there  are  thou- 
sands to  step  into  the  place. 


The  Hoppers  109 

On  the  side  of  dollars  and  cents,  it  is  estimated 
that  although  $800  is  the  minimum  amount  upon 
which  a  man  can  support  himself,  a  wife  and 
three  children  under  working  age  in  Manhattan 
and  the  Bronx,  a  recent  investigation  has  shown 
that  the  average  wage  of  339,221  workers  in  these 
two  boroughs  is  only  $543.  The  average  wages  of 
101,995  heads  of  families  in  Brooklyn  was  $519. 
The  economic  loss  from  1905  to  1908  through 
deaths  from  preventable  disease  in  New  York 
City  alone  was  $160,000,000.  With  the  contin- 
uance of  the  immigration  flood  and  the  further 
crowding  in  of  thousands  of  newly  arrived  aliens 
in  New  York  the  wages  will  fall  lower  and  lower, 
while  the  economic  loss  to  the  community  will  go 
mounting  up. 

There  is  no  scruple  in  the  methods  of  agents 
who  sell  tickets  in  driving  a  contract  for  pas- 
sage. The  writer  has  seen  copies  of  mortgages 
given  on  the  other  side  that  would  tie  up  the 
prospective  immigrant's  wages  for  years  and  bind 
him  to  a  lifelong  slavery  here.  The  Commis- 
sioner General  of  Immigration  protests  vigor- 
ously in  his  annual  reports  against  the  flagrant 


no    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

stimulation  of  immigration  for  profit.     He  says, 
for  instance : 


The  truth  of  the  matter  is  that  the  peasants  have  for  a 
number  of  years  supplied  a  rich  harvest  to  the  promoters 
of  immigration.  The  promoter  is  usually  a  steamship  ticket 
agent  employed  on  a  commission  basis,  or  a  professional 
money  lender  or  a  combination  of  the  two.  .  .  .  The  more 
aliens  they  bring  over  the  more  there  are  to  be  carried 
back  if  failure  meets  the  tentative  immigrant  and  the  more 
likely  to  follow  later  if  success  is  his  lot.  Whatever  the 
outcome  it  is  a  good  commercial  proposition  for  the  steam- 
ship line. 

It  is  only  in  the  years  of  slumps  in  third-class 
passenger  traffic  that  the  big  lines  pass  dividends. 
One  of  the  largest  English  companies  which  did 
not  pay  a  dividend  in  April,  1909,  explained  in 
its  report :  "  The  number  of  third-class  passengers 
landed  in  the  United  States  in  1908  was  much 
smaller  than  in  1907."  The  directors  of  one  of 
the  biggest  German  companies  explained,  in  that 
same  year,  that  the  great  drop  in  profits  shown 
by  the  annual  balance  sheet  was  due  to  "  the  un- 
paralleled reduction  in  the  number  of  steerage 
passengers  carried"  which  was  about  185,000 


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The  Hoppers  ill 

less  than  in  the  previous  year.  But  in  normal 
times,  in  which  there  are  brought  to  us  about  1,- 
000,000  immigrants  annually,  the  transatlantic 
lines  make  big  profits  from  the  steerage. 

With  the  Commissioner  General  of  Immigra- 
tion protesting  year  after  year,  why  are  not  some 
of  these  evils  remedied?  The  answer  is  simple — 
his  protests  are  not  allowed  to  go  far.  In  a  re- 
cent report  he  said: 

Money  lenders  and  other  sharks  have  joined  hands  for 
the  purpose  of  exploiting  prospective  passengers,  providing 
them  with  passage  money  under  a  credit  system  which 
amounted  almost  to  robbery ;  and  insuring  themselves 
against  loss  by  taking  mortgages  and  joint  notes. 

They  have  issued  circulars  and  advertisements  and 
made  use  of  extensive  correspondence  through  their  own 
agents  in  this  country  and  in  Europe,  some  of  it  spurious  in 
character,  to  impress  the  peasants  with  the  belief  that  em- 
ployment could  be  secured  on  landing  in  the  United  States. 

How  many  of  these  reports  reached  the 
public?  In  answer  to  a  letter  addressed  to 
the  Commissioner  General  the  reply  has  been 
that  just  5,000  reports  are  annually  printed 
and    distributed.     And   yet   at   the   last    presi- 


112    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

dential  election  there  were  about  15,000,000 
voters  who  were  supposed  to  have  exercised  their 
franchise  with  intelligence.  Why  is  it  that  more 
of  them  were  not  made  familiar  with  the  facts? 
That  New  York  is  really  no  longer  able  to  cope 
with  the  flood  is  evidenced  when  such  men  as 
Jacob  H.  Schiff,  who  perhaps  has  done  more  to 
help  the  oppressed  in  the  land  of  his  fathers 
than  any  one  American,  said  recently  to  a  gath- 
ering of  newly  arrived  immigrants: 

We  feel  that  we  have  already  reached  the  limit  of  ab- 
sorption. We  must  set  you  recent  immigrants  to  thinking 
and  you  must  advise  your  friends  at  home.  You  must  do 
this  for  your  own  good,  for  your  health  and  prosperity 
and  for  the  future  of  your  children.  Help  us  to  solve  the 
problem  of  distribution.  The  problem  of  immigration  to-day 
is  not  what  it  was  thirty  years  ago.  Experience  has  taught 
us  that  there  is  a  limit  to  this  city's  absorbing  capacity.  We 
must  continue  to  take  in  the  immigrant,  but  we  must  make 
him  go  to  some  other  part  of  the  United  States. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  STRANDED   HOST 

f INHERE  are  powerful  influences  operating 
against  the  Americanization  of  our  im- 
migrants. The  ticket  agents  and  the  foreign 
banking  concerns  which  have  branches  here  as 
well  as  the  private  "  bankers  "  usually  encourage 
the  retention  of  citizenship  in  the  fatherland. 
They  know  that  as  long  as  the  immigrant  does 
not  become  an  American  citizen  he  will  send  his 
savings  back  to  his  native  country,  or  if  he  is 
unable  to  save  he  will  return  home  and  that 
means  the  sale  of  another  passage.  The  Ameri- 
can branches  of  the  foreign  banks  often  advertise 
extensively  that  they  are  authorized  by  the  home 
Governments  to  take  care  of  the  savings  of  their 
countrymen  here  and  transport  them  back  to 
Europe.      The     ignorant     depositors,    knowing 

nothing  of  our  State  and  national  banks,  are 

113 


114    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

easily  persuaded  that  their  own  banks  are 
the  safest.  Newspapers  teaching  old  country 
doctrines  and  influencing  the  aliens  to  retain 
their  native  citizenship  are  printed  by  these 
foreign  and  private  banks  and  the  ticket 
agencies.  The  slower  depositors  are  in  becom- 
ing American  citizens  the  longer  the  private 
banks  will  handle  their  money.  The  fact  that 
518,215  aliens  returned  home  in  the  year  that 
ended  June  30,  1911,  was  largely  due  to  these 
influences.  Of  that  number  295,666  were  emi- 
grant aliens,  that  is  departing  aliens  whose  resi- 
dence had  been  in  the  United  States  but  who  in- 
tended to  live  permanently  abroad.  There  were 
also  222,549  non-emigrant  aliens,  that  is  aliens 
who  resided  abroad  and  who  returned  to  their 
homes  after  a  temporary  trip  to  the  United 
States.  The  net  gain  in  population  by  immigra- 
tion in  that  one  year  then  was  512,085,  as  com- 
pared with  817,619  for  the  fiscal  year  1910.  The 
vast  majority  of  those  returning,  unfortunately, 
were  not  from  the  congested  districts  of  New 
York. 

Of  the  coalition  of  immigrant  bankers  and 


The  Stranded  Host  115 

other  "interests"   one   Congressional   Commis- 
sion has  said: 

By  constant  appeal  to  the  prejudice  and  patriotism  of 
the  immigrant  his  Americanization  is  not  only  retarded  but 
deliberately  combated  in  order  that  he  may  be  held  as  a 
source  of  income  to  those  whom  he  trusts. 

An  investigation  in  1907  showed  there  were 
2,625  concerns  in  the  United  States  doing  an  im- 
migrant banking  business.  They  had  not  then 
spread  west  of  the  Mississippi  river.  The  num- 
ber has  greatly  increased  since.  A  government 
report  at  that  time  described  these  banks  as  "  en- 
tirely irresponsible."  It  has  been  estimated  that 
more  than  100,000  persons  are  now  engaged  in 
the  immigrant  banking,  ticket  agency  and  pa- 
drone business. 

The  disasters  to  their  helpless  clients  through 
the  stealings  and  failures  of  so-called  private 
bankers  are  frequent  and  leave  a  long  trail  of 
wretchedness  and  poverty.  Many  cases  come  to 
light  in  the  Children's  Courts  and  in  the  Chari- 
ties Departments  where  the  families'  misfortunes 
have  been  caused  by  the  dishonest  collapse  of 


n6    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

these  institutions.  Perhaps  after  years  of  hardest 
toil  it  has  been  possible  to  put  aside  a  few  dollars 
with  the  "  banker."  He  has  always  been  trusted, 
too,  to  transmit  money  to  Europe  to  pay  off  the 
obligations  there.  Then  the  banker  has  disap- 
peared over-night  and  his  doors  have  closed.  He 
has  appropriated  the  money  and  there  is  no  re- 
dress. In  one  year,  the  amount  stolen  from  alien 
depositors  in  New  York  alone  by  such  bogus  in- 
stitutions was  a  million  and  a  half.  One  banker, 
bonded  for  $15,000,  failed  with  obligations  out- 
standing for  $600,000. 

An  investigation  showed  that  eighty  per  cent, 
of  these  banks  easily  violated  a  ridiculous  law 
that,  regardless  of  the  amount  of  deposits,  they 
should  be  bonded  for  $15,000.  Other  States 
have  laws  quite  as  lax.  One  banker  who  had 
branches  in  Pittsburg  and  Connellsville  as  well 
as  New  York,  went  into  the  hands  of  a  receiver 
lately  with  liabilities  of  nearly  $1,000,000.  A 
Congressional  Commission  was  appointed  to  in- 
vestigate, but  most  commissions  bring  little 
action.  This  particular  Commission,  however, 
reported  regarding  this  case: 


The  Stranded  Host  117 

This  banker  is  a  national  and  religious  leader  among 
his  people  having  organized  and  headed  a  national  Slovak 
society  in  this  country.  He  issues  a  daily,  a  weekly,  a 
humorous  monthly,  a  yearly  almanac,  and  from  time  to  time 
other  publications.  Although  he  has  renounced  allegiance  to 
Hungary,  severed  all  political  ties  with  that  country  and  has 
become  an  American  citizen,  he  does  not  advise  the  Slovak 
countrymen  to  do  the  same,  but,  instead,  preaches  in  all  his 
publications  a  militant  and  enthusiastic  Pan-Slovakism.  So 
long  as  the  Slovaks  remain  Slovaks  and  can  be  filled  with 
Slovak  patriotism  and  enthusiasm  by  such  agitation,  just  so 
long  will  they  remain  a  source  of  profit  to  the  banker. 

"Prior  to  the  recent  industrial  depression  this  man  was 
accustomed  to  transmit  abroad  on  behalf  of  his  patrons, 
from  $2,000,000  to  $2,500,000  annually  and  to  sell  6,000 
steamship  tickets  per  year. 


A  recent  statute  enacted  in  New  York  requir- 
ing of  each  private  banker  a  deposit  in  cash  of 
|10,000  and  a  bond  of  from  $10,000  to  $100,000  — 
to  be  fixed  in  proportion  to  the  amount  of  busi- 
ness done  —  may  possibly  be  of  some  help  in  this 
State.  There  are  of  course  reliable  private 
bankers,  and  they  have  been  urging  that  it 
would  be  much  safer  to  compel  these  concerns 
to  invest  only  in  first-class  mortgages  at  no 
more  than  sixty  per  cent,  valuation,  making  it 
a  crime  to  invest  otherwise.     They  say  the  new 


n8    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

law  subjects  them  to  the  exactions  of  surety  com- 
panies that  "tie  them  hand  and  foot."  If  pri- 
vate banks  are  permitted  to  handle  immigrant 
money  at  all  they  should  be  subjected  to  just  as 
strict  supervisions  as  our  native  banking  institu- 
tions. 

Many  of  the  bankers  and  ticket  agents  are  pa- 
drones,  placing  aliens  at  work  where  and  under 
what  conditions  they  choose.  Immigrants  who 
finally  get  beyond  New  York,  are  often  first 
herded  into  boarding  houses,  whose  keepers  are 
the  steamship  agents  or  padrones  themselves  or 
who  work  hand  in  hand  with  them.  One  private 
banker,  whose  operations  recently  received  offi- 
cial attention,  had  handled  immigrants  by  the 
hundred.  Taking  advantage  of  their  ignorance 
he  agreed  to  pay  his  countrymen  seventy-five 
cents  a  day  for  their  labor.  He  housed  them, 
pending  the  placing  of  them  with  big  contractors, 
charged  his  own  prices  for  food  and  lodging  and 
when  the  new  arrivals  finally  went  to  work  there 
were  substantial  bills  hanging  over  them.  He 
hired  the  men  out  at  f  1.50  a  day,  and  at  times  in 
hundred-men  lots.     He  not  only  made  one  hun- 


The  Stranded  Host  119 

dred  per  cent,  on  their  wages,  but  profited  fifty 
per  cent,  on  what  he  forced  from  them  for  food 
and  lodging. 

Between  150,000  and  200,000  farm  laborers 
and  farmers  are  admitted  to  the  United  States 
each  year,  men  whose  help  is  badly  needed  for 
our  rapidly  deteriorating  agriculture.  They 
were  anxious  to  go  to  the  land,  to  do  a  man's 
work,  for  certainly  the  tillage  of  the  soil  is  one 
of  man's  most  desirable  occupations.  A  vast 
number  of  them  get  no  nearer  to  a  farm  than 
a  pushcart  or  a  sweatshop  on  the  East  Side. 
Others  are  shuttled  into  the  mines  or  on  con- 
tract labor  jobs  to  slave  for  the  padrones. 

When  the  immigrant  has  enough  money  to  get 
past  New  York,  he  is  often  forced  to  pay  about  as 
much,  for  his  transportation  as  if  he  were  buy- 
ing a  first-class  ticket.  The  General  Passenger 
Traffic  Manager  of  one  of  the  biggest  roads  in  the 
country  admitted  recently,  at  a  hearing  before 
a  special  examiner  for  the  Interstate  Commerce 
Commission,  that  the  immigrants  on  some  lines 
were  forced  to  pay  practically  as  much  for  their 
transportation  as  if  accommodations  and  privi- 


120    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

leges  offered  had  been  first-class.  The  first-class 
ticket  was  unlimited,  the  immigrant's  ticket  was 
limited  to  two  days.  The  immigrant  could  ride 
only  in  a  smoking  car  or  on  an  immigrant  train, 
the  cars  of  which  in  many  instances  did  not  have 
washstands.  There  were  no  porters  or  brake- 
men  to  assist  the  women  or  children. 

It  also  went  on  record  at  this  hearing  that  the 
immigrants  who  paid  full  passenger  rates  were 
often  kept  huddled  together  for  hours  at  various 
terminals.  Our  prospective  citizens  did  not  ex- 
pect plush  cushions  or  leather  couches,  nor  had 
they  been  led  to  believe  when  they  left  their 
homes  on  the  other  side  that  they  would  be  forced 
to  pay  for  first-class  accommodations  and  fare 
badly.  It  frequently  happened  that  the  cars  in 
which  they  were  hauled  were  hitched  on  to 
freight  trains.  This  investigation  did  result  in 
some  improvement  in  accommodations  but  there 
still  remains  much  to  be  done. 

Owners  of  mines  and  of  company  stores  are 
no  less  greedy  and  relentless  than  the  padrones, 
and  the  tenement  and  sweatshop  owners.  An  in- 
tensive study  of  the  households  of  2,371  miners 


The  Stranded  Host  121 

made  by  Government  agents  shows  an  average 
of  $37.50  per  month  as  the  earnings  of  the  heads 
of  families.  Practically  all  of  these  men  are  for- 
eigners. Often  the  miner  sees  little  cash  in  pay- 
ment for  his  services,  for  the  script,  store-order 
or  check  system  is  common.  If  he  has  not 
mortgaged  his  prospective  wages  too  heavily  be- 
fore quitting  the  agent's  office  in  his  own  country 
he  may  in  time  be  able  to  start  a  meager  bank  ac- 
count. Then  slack  times  come  and  another 
designing  agent,  usually  of  his  own  nationality, 
may  persuade  him  that  it  is  best  for  him  to  go 
home  until  the  situation  has  improved  here. 
This  means  another  commission. 

There  are  traps  without  number  into  which  the 
community,  by  its  selfish  quiescence,  permits  our 
new  arrivals  to  fall.  A  few  immigrant  societies 
are  trying  to  stop  some  of  these  abuses,  taking  up 
in  a  small  way  a  task  that  is  too  big  for  them 
and  which  should  be  handled  by  the  Government 
itself.  But  the  "  interests  "  prevent  that.  The 
abuses  in  connection  with  naturalization,  only 
one  of  the  many  counts  against  the  Government, 
have  been  a   burning  scandal.     The  Mayor  of 


122    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

New  York  City,  in  a  recent  letter  to  the  United 
States  Attorney  General,  said:  "When  men 
cannot  get  naturalized  without  paying  corrup- 
tion money  for  it,  they  cannot  be  expected  to 
feel  otherwise  than  that  the  Government  is  cor- 
rupt throughout." 

This  criticism  was  in  connection  with  the  ex- 
posure of  extortion  from  prospective  citizens  who 
applied  for  their  papers  at  the  Naturalization 
Bureau.  For  years  applicants  had  commonly 
been  forced  to  give  money  to  get  ahead  in  the 
waiting  line  in  the  Federal  Building.  After 
losing  days  of  work  the  applicant  who  did  not 
pay  found  himself  further  down  the  line  than 
when  he  first  applied.  The  men  who  have  con- 
ducted this  traffic  have  not  been  government  offi- 
cials, but  outsiders  who  have  taken  advantage 
of  the  Government's  inadequate  facilities  for 
handling  the  business.  Abuse  after  abuse  has 
been  exposed  in  this  connection  and  a  few  extra 
clerks  were  put  on  while  the  matter  was  being 
"  stirred  up." 

As  one  writer  said  in  an  editorial  when  a  nat- 
uralization bribe-taker  was  arrested :  "  The  chief 


The  Stranded  Host  123 

offender  is  the  United  States.  By  not  providing 
proper  facilities  for  naturalization  the  Govern- 
ment flouts  its  own  laws." 

The  placing  of  immigrants  on  farms  is  one  of 
the  greatest  needs  of  the  day.  The  over-popula- 
tion in  the  cities  means  heavy  loss  from  preventa- 
ble disease,  and  endless  drain  on  the  resources 
of  the  municipality  in  attempting  to  relieve  the 
distress  of  the  stranded  armies  of  immigrants. 
A  bureau  has  been  organized  within  the  past  few 
years  whose  purpose  was  bravely  announced  to 
be  the  moving  on  of  newly  arrived  aliens  to  the 
places  where  their  labor  is  really  needed.  How 
little  has  been  accomplished  is  apparent  from  the 
figures  of  a  report  by  the  Commissioner  General 
which  shows  that  of  the  878,587  aliens  admitted 
for  the  year  which  ended  June  30,  1911,  only 
30,657  applicants  received  any  information  from 
this  new  Division  of  Information,  and  only  5,176 
went  direct  to  the  place  upon  they  were  em- 
ployed. 

This  division  should  be  made  one  of  the  most 
important  in  the  immigration  service.  Its  chief 
is  most  anxious  to  do  this  but  is  not  receiving  the 


124    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

support  he  should  have  from  the  Government. 
Its  growth  will  have  to  be  rapid  to  make  any  im- 
pression on  the  incoming  armies.  The  head  of 
the  Division  says  officially : 

Able,  healthy,  willing  workers  have  anxiously  scanned 
the  records  of  opportunities  presented  to  them  by  the  Divi- 
sion of  Information  only  to  turn  away  disappointed,  for 
the  most  alluring  of  them  lay  at  points  hopelessly  beyond 
their  grasp  because  of  financial  inability  to  reach  the 
destination.  The  Division  of  Information  could  have  di- 
rected thousands  of  people  to  places  where  they  could  have 
secured  employment  on  land  were  it  not  for  the  lack  of 
means  on  the  part  ot  applicants  to  pay  traveling  expenses. 

A  manager  of  one  of  the  biggest  fruit  com- 
panies on  the  Pacific  coast,  a  concern  that  em- 
ployed 25,000  persons,  told  the  writer  that  the 
greatest  difficulty  was  experienced  in  obtaining 
sufficient  labor.  Seven  months  in  the  year  the 
workers  received  $2.50  a  day  and  for  the  other 
five  $1.25  a  day.  Many  thousands  of  the  farm 
workers  who  land  in  New  York  are  Southern  Eu- 
ropeans who  are  good  fruit  growers,  but,  like 
other  immigrants,  they  often  do  not  have  on  ar- 
rival more  than  the  necessary  twenty-five  dollars. 
New  York  is  a  long  way  from  the  Pacific  coast. 


The  Stranded  Host  125 

Their  little  capital  is  quickly  gone  and  they  are 
lucky  if  they  have  been  able  to  hang  on  to  the 
skirts  of  some  half-legitimate  occupation.  Were 
they  helped  to  reach  the  farm  lands  that  lie  idle 
beyond  the  gateway,  even  in  the  Eastern  States, 
what  powerful  factors  they  would  be  in  redeem- 
ing barren  acres.  Farming  in  New  York  State 
alone  has  decreased  in  value  fl68,000,000  since 
1880.  Some  of  the  railroads  are  now  taking  up 
the  matter  of  the  redemption  of  farm  lands  pri- 
vately, but  this  too,  is  a  work  for  the  Govern- 
ment. 

Someone  will  say :  "  Why,  I  know  of  an  immi- 
grant who  went  to  a  farm  and  stayed  there  only 
a  month,  then  he  was  back  in  the  city ;  what's  the 
use?"  But  when  we  get  at  the  real  facts  we 
usually  find  that  the  immigrant  had  no  one  about 
him  who  spoke  his  own  language  and  that  his 
employer,  taking  advantage  of  his  ignorance  and 
helplessness,  drove  him  early  and  late  and  at  the 
most  meager  wages.  Little  effort  has  been  made 
by  State  or  Government  to  place  the  immigrant 
where  there  is  economic  attraction.  Groups  of 
immigrants  from  the  same  country,  when  placed 


126    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

on  neighboring  farms  where  cooperation  was 
possible,  granted  that  they  knew  anything  at  all 
about  farming,  or  had  any  practical  supervision, 
have  invariably  been  successful. 

And  here  it  is  important  to  correct  a  popular 
notion  that  it  is  useless  to  try  to  interest  the 
Jews  in  agriculture.  It  is  commonly  said  that 
they  will  never  make  farmers,  that  they  prefer 
towns  where  there  is  more  use  for  their  wits  and 
less  for  their  hands.  Such  a  statement  is  usually 
born  of  gross  ignorance  and  bigotry  and,  in 
spite  of  experimental  failures  in  other  countries, 
needs  great  qualification.  It  is  an  assumption, 
based  upon  the  past,  rather  than  a  fact,  opera- 
tive for  the  future.  For  the  Jew  had  for  cen- 
turies been  dispossessed,  he  has  forcibly  been 
herded  into  towns  and  forbidden  the  land  in 
many  countries. 

Take,  for  instance,  the  situation  of  the  Kus- 
sian  Jew  as  we  learn  it  from  the  immigrant.  In 
line  with  other  cruelties,  its  pogroms,  its  relent- 
less persecutions  and  slaughters,  the  Russian 
Government  will  not  permit  Jews  to  buy,  lease  or 
manage  real  property  except  in  the  towns  and 


C  C 

B  S 

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.  c 

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.5? 

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o 


The  Stranded  Host  127 

cities  within  the  Pale  of  Settlement.  The  Pale 
consists  of  fifteen  provinces,  a  twenty-third  part 
of  the  Empire.  Here  practically  all  the  Jewish 
population,  between  five  and  six  millions  in  num- 
ber, is  forced  to  live.  There  are  only  200,000 
Jews  in  Russia  to-day  who  are  tilling  the  soil.  A 
movement  to  give  the  Jews  in  Russia  a  chance  at 
the  land,  which  began  in  the  eighties,  started 
them  in  this  work.  But  this  movement  was  com- 
paratively short-lived,  for  the  recent  May  laws 
have  made  it  impossible  for  Jews  further  to  de- 
velop established  agricultural  colonies  or  to  start 
new  ones  within  the  limits  of  the  Russian  Em- 
pire. While  Jewish  artisans  may  live  in  almost 
all  parts  of  Russia,  they  are  prohibited  from  ac- 
quiring real  estate  outside  the  towns  or  cities 
of  the  Pale.  The  artisan's  son,  who  lives  outside, 
if  he  be  not  fortunate  enough  to  have  acquired 
the  legal  right  of  residence,  must,  on  coming  of 
age,  go  to  the  Pale.  Many  of  their  callings  that 
were  formerly  classed  as  artisan  are  now  declared 
to  be  non-artisan  and  the  workers  in  these  have 
been  forced  back  to  the  Ghetto.  This  explains 
then  why  there  are  so  few  Jewish  farmers  and 


128    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

why  the  vocations  in  which  Eussian  Jews  engage 
are  seemingly  limited  to  trading  —  they  have 
been  shut  out  of  practically  everything  else  in 
their  native  land. 

That  the  Jews  are  successful  when  given  a 
chance  at  the  land  is  shown  by  the  experiences  of 
the  Industrial  Removal  Office  in  New  York  which 
has  transplanted  a  sufficiently  large  number  of 
East  Side  workers  to  farms  to  show  that  they 
make  most  successful  tillers  of  the  soil.  Many 
fresh  arrivals  are  being  sent  to  the  hills  of  New 
England  and  to  the  valleys  of  Texas  and  to  the 
nearer  fields  of  New  Jersey  by  the  Removal  Of- 
fice and  by  other  Jewish  immigrant  societies. 
Whenever  they  go  to  the  farms  in  cooperative 
companies  they  are  successful.  In  nine  years  the 
Jewish  Agricultural  and  Industrial  Society 
loaned  $648,921  for  the  purpose  of  establishing 
Jews  on  farms,  and  already  more  than  $200,000 
has  been  repaid.  With  the  loans  secured  at  le- 
gal rates  of  interest  have  gone  advice  and  assist- 
ance of  every  sort.  Social  needs  have  been  con- 
sidered in  this  plan,  as  it  is  fully  recognized  that 
the   isolated    immigrant    farmer    suffers    social 


The  Stranded  Host  129 

death.  To-day,  wits  as  well  as  hands  are  needed 
for  the  successful  farmer  and  the  Jew  enjoys  the 
employment  of  both.  An  agricultural  paper  is 
published  in  Yiddish,  and  in  these  colonies,  the 
Jewish  farmer  has  the  companionship  of  his  co- 
religionists. By  these  and  other  means  he  is 
secured  from  that  starvation  of  the  mind  which 
is  to  him  the  most  dreaded  of  all  fates. 

Before  me  at  this  moment  is  a  letter  from  an 
East  Side  young  man,  a  Jew,  who  is  studying  ag- 
riculture at  the  Woodbine  (N.  J.)  colony,  in 
which  he  says: — 

Our  studies  are  those  needed  by  the  practical  farmer 
to  help  him  make  his  farm  a  success.  The  time  spent  here 
is  worth  while.  My  highest  ambition  in  life  is  to  possess 
a  homestead  on  a  farm  run  on  a  successful  basis.  My  hopes 
and  spirits  are  high.  If  it  is  possible  for  one  man  to  work 
his  way  through  college,  it  is  also  possible  for  another, 
and  I  am  going  to  have  that  farm. 

But  while  meager  hundreds  of  men  are  dis- 
tributed by  these  societies,  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands are  ceaselessly  pouring  in  and  are  tramp- 
ling out  one  another's  life  in  the  gateway. 

How   important    then    that   the   Government 


130    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

should  take  up  the  distribution  question  in  ear- 
nest and  relieve  the  congestion  of  the  cities  with 
all  the  poverty,  the  extortion,  the  slavery,  the 
death  which  it  entails.  The  crowding  in  our 
dense  alien  colonies  is  making  compulsory  para- 
sites of  people  who  would  be  able  helpers  if  given 
a  chance  in  the  open.  Of  the  gain  in  population 
in  the  past  ten  years  seventy-three  per  cent,  was 
in  cities  of  25,000  and  over,  this  while  our  farm- 
ing country  continues  to  be  depopulated  and  our 
agricultural  consumption  seriously  threatens  to 
exceed  our  production.  The  head  of  one  great 
railroad  has  said  that  we  shall  not  see  these 
things  until  starvation  drives  us  to  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

LABELING  THE  BUSINESS 

rilHERE  is  little  virtue  in  dwelling  on  evil  liv- 
**•  ing  conditions  unless  effective  remedies  are 
offered.  Such  remedies  there  are,  but  public 
apathy  or  ignorance  on  the  one  hand,  and  private 
interests  on  the  other  have  thus  far  hindered 
their  use.  It  is  said  that  the  total  number  of  un- 
necessary deaths  in  London  is  as  great  each  year 
as  the  total  number  of  deaths  in  the  English 
army  during  the  three  years  of  the  Boer  war. 
And  yet  the  death  rate  for  New  York  has  aver- 
aged for  the  past  five  years  about  three  points 
higher  than  that  of  London.  The  Health  Com- 
missioner of  New  York  has  declared  that  if  medi- 
cal science  were  enabled  to-day  to  put  into  effect 
what  it  knows  regarding  hygiene  and  sanitation, 
the  death  rate  could  be  cut  in  half.  The  tearing 
down  of  old  houses  in  a  certain  section  of  Glas- 
gow a  few  years  ago,  and  the  building  of  new 

131 


132    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

tenements  to  replace  them  reduced  the  death  rate 
in  that  district  from  fifty-five  per  thousand  to  a 
little  over  fourteen.  There  are  rookeries  in 
some  of  our  great  American  cities,  quite  as  bad 
as  any  that  ever  existed  in  Glasgow. 

The  homes  we  have  thus  far  visited  in  the 
crowded  districts  are  those  whose  troubles  have 
been  due  to  poverty  and  all  that  poverty  brings 
with  it.  But  there  are  other  things  to  be  reck- 
oned with  in  all  this  inhuman  herding;  the 
drunkenness  among  many  of  our  native  popula- 
tion, the  constant  spectacles  of  vice  that  pass  be- 
fore the  children's  eyes  and  are  about  them  upon 
every  side.  There  are  homes,  not  those  of  newly 
arrived  immigrants  but  of  older  residents,  whose 
squalid  surroundings  foster  amazing  viciousness. 
That  these  crime-breeding  places  should  be  per- 
mitted to  stand  for  a  day  shows  a  serious  lack  of 
authority  in  health,  tenement,  building  and  po- 
lice departments.  Let  us  look  into  a  home  of 
this  type. 

The  presence  of  two  children  in  a  horror  hole 
in  Water  Street  came  to  the  attention  of  the  au- 
thorities recently  quite  by  accident.     For  nine 


Labeling  the  Business  133 

months  the  brother  and  sister  had  been  living 
there  in  company  with  seventy  professional 
women  beggars.  They  had  been  sleeping  in  a  lit- 
tle compartment  no  bigger  and  no  lighter  than  a 
coal  bin.  With  lanterns  and  candles  the  officers 
had  gone  in  early  one  morning  to  the  rescue. 
The  pitiful  story  in  Court  of  the  anaemic  two 
whose  faces  belied  their  age  by  a  dozen  years 
led  the  writer  to  visit  the  place  in  company  with 
a  Society  officer  on  the  day  following  the  raid. 
The  premises  were  two  dilapidated  two-story  and 
attic  frame  houses  connected  by  a  shed  at  the 
rear.  These  crazy  structures  were  a  relic  of  the 
wooden  age  in  tenements,  but  by  law  they  were 
permitted  to  stand.  Crudely  painted  figures  on 
little  blocks  of  wood  askew  over  the  tilted  door 
frames  marked,  the  police  told  me,  the  storm  cen- 
ter of  more  ambulance  and  patrol  wagon  calls 
than  any  other  house  in  that  precinct. 

To  knock,  we  found,  was  a  needless  ceremony. 
In  a  little  vestibule  boarded  off  from  the  front 
room  sat  three  ragged  crones,  evidently  waiting 
to  engage  a  bed  for  the  night.  One  grinned  at 
sight  of  us,  revealing  two  yellow  tusks  little  more 


134    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

unpleasant  than  her  other  features  and,  to  our  as- 
tonishment, she  dropped  a  mock  courtesy. 

"  Please,  kind  sirs,"  she  wheedled,  "  will  you 
not  cross  a  lady's  palm  with  silver?  "  And  she 
stretched  out  a  gaunt,  grimy  hand. 

With  a  cackle  she  exhibited  the  coins  to  her 
envious  companions.  We  passed  the  partitions 
to  a  cramped  compartment  and  gradually  made 
out,  in  the  dim  light  of  a  smoky  lamp,  a  dozen 
creatures  with  hideous  faces,  squatted  about  on 
shakedowns.  There  was  a  little  stove  on  which 
a  pot  was  boiling.  A  few  of  the  hags  shrank 
away,  evidently  thinking  it  was  the  police  again, 
and  two,  whose  faces  had  been  deeply  cut  and 
bruised,  retreated,  cursing,  to  a  stairway.  One 
,  of  the  seated  company  volunteered  in  a  concilia- 
tory way: 

"  We  just  got  back  from  work  and  are  restin' 
a  bit.     There  ain't  nothing  wrong  about  that?  " 

"  They're  always  resting  a  bit  when  they  are 
not  fighting,"  remarked  the  agent. 

Most  of  the  company,  however,  showed  little 
interest  in  the  call  and  when  we  asked  how  it 
went  with  them,  one  arose,  fork  in  hand,  and,  as 


Labeling  the  Business  135 

she  tried  the  potatoes,   replied :    "  Everything 
is  all  right.     God  is  good  to  us." 

The  rickety  stairs  were  so  steep  that  it  was  a 
matter  of  pulling  ourselves  up  rather  than  of 
walking.  The  wonder  was  how  they  managed  it 
when  they  were  drunk.  On  the  landing  at  the 
top,  and  under  a  window  most  of  whose  glass 
had  been  replaced  by  rags  and  paper,  lay  a  girl 
of  not  more  than  twenty  in  a  besotted  sleep. 
Degradation  had  worked  fast,  but  it  had  not  yet 
destroyed  every  good  feature.  A  little  more 
time,  however,  and  that  face  would  be  as  hide- 
ous as  the  others.  The  room  just  off  the  land- 
ing was  divided  into  little  black  pens ;  each,  how- 
ever, rented  as  a  "  room "  for  two  dollars  a 
week.  It  was  in  one  of  those  holes  that  the 
children  had  been  found  huddled  with  their  fa- 
ther and  three  hags.  The  father,  we  learned, 
worked  in  a  Fulton  Street  fish  market  and  out 
of  his  wages  of  six  dollars  had  paid  something 
each  week  for  the  maintenance  of  the  little  boy 
and  girl.  The  mother  had  disappeared  about 
a  year  before.  In  another  "  room  "  we  found 
the  landlady  trying  to  rouse  the  occupant  of  a 


136    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

cot  who  was  sleeping  off  the  effects  of  "  third 
rail "  whiskey,  famous  in  that  neighborhood. 
The  sleeper  finally  raised  herself  on  an  elbow, 
looked  dazedly  at  the  visitors  and  sighed: 

"  I  wish  I  was  married." 

"  Umph,  is  that  all  that's  a-troubling  ye, 
Sadie?"  remarked  the  landlady. 

"  Yes,  it's  awful  lonesome  livin'  this  way," 
and  the  lonesome  lady  sank  back  on  the  cot  into 
sleep  and  snores  again  while  we  interviewed 
the  hostess.  The  latter  was  sixty,  sober,  and 
business-like.  Her  only  concern  was  lest  we 
had  come  to  arrest  Sadie  and  take  her  away  be- 
fore she  had  paid  for  her  lodgings. 

The  business  of  the  harboring  the  women  was 
quite  profitable,  we  learned,  and  the  landlady 
had  a  good  sized  bank  account.  The  ordinary 
lodgers  paid  ten  cents  a  night.  This,  with  the 
money  that  came  from  the  "  roomers,"  gave  her  a 
nice  profit,  although  she  was  obliged  to  pay 
seventy  dollars  a  month  for  rent.  The  landlady 
finally  produced  a  key  and  led  us  to  her  room. 
It  was  luxurious  by  way  of  contrast.  There  was 
a  carpet,  a  bed  with  white  spread  and  pillow 


Labeling  the  Business  137 

shams,  some  faded  prints  and  a  crucifix  on  the 
walls.  The  lodgers,  she  told  us,  were  never  ad- 
mitted here;  we  were  privileged  visitors.  And 
yet  one  lodger  did  penetrate  into  her  sanctuary 
one  night  some  weeks  after  our  visit  and 
stabbed  the  landlady  through  the  heart  as  she 
slept,  gathered  up  the  week's  receipts  and  fled 
out  into  the  night. 

Some  of  her  "  girls,"  as  the  landlady  told  us, 
made  snug  sums  from  their  infirmities,  faked  or 
real,  and  their  street  corner  pleas  for  charity. 
The  "  third-rail  joints,"  she  admitted,  got  most 
of  it. 

As  we  descended  the  perilous  stairs  we  were 
stopped  by  a  weazened  woman  with  a  beard  on 
her  chin.  She  had  begged  fifteen  cents  from  us 
a  little  while  before  "  for  tobacco,"  but  she  had 
a  flask  and  was  dancing  now  "to  show  how 
young  "  she  was. 

"  They're  just  getting  tuned  up  for  the  night," 
observed  the  officer.  "  It  will  not  be  long  before 
they  are  dragging  one  another  around  by  the 
hair." 

As  we  stepped  out  into  the  open  and  breathed 


138    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

in  the  cold  air  it  all  seemed  to  have  been  a  hor- 
rible dream.  But  this  was  the  home  of  the  two 
pitiful  children  and  it  will  be  long  before  the 
memories  of  the  orgies,  the  brutalities  of  the 
place  will  be  effaced  from  their  impressionable 
minds. 

As  has  been  stated  it  was  only  by  accident 
that  the  case  of  these  two  little  unfortunates 
came  to  the  attention  of  the  authorities.  It  is 
true  that  a  place  like  this  of  the  beggars  is  ex- 
ceptional and  it  was  torn  down  sometime  after 
our  visit,  yet  we  cannot  but  wonder  how  many 
more  children  are  living  in  conditions  just  as 
horrible  that  no  accident  has  yet  revealed  to  the 
courts.  There  are  thousands  of  them  in  cellars 
in  New  York  who  do  not  figure  in  the  police  or 
society  records,  but  who  do  figure  big  in  the  mor- 
tality reports.  Their  parents  and  guardians  are 
not  drunkards.  In  fact  there  is  comparatively 
little  drunkenness  in  the  dense  alien  colonies; 
that  is  chiefly  the  vice  of  native  Americans.  The 
trouble  is  not  with  inefficient  or  corrupt  officials, 
but  with  a  sleeping  public.  New  York  to-day 
has  a  most  capable  and  conservative  Tenement 


Labeling  the  Business  139 

House  Commissioner  who  is  doing  all  within  his 
power  to  remedy  conditions  but  his  power  is  not 
big  enough. 

A  recent  report  of  the  Tenement  House  De- 
partment showed  that  there  were  in  New  York 
City  25,387  basement  or  cellar  tenements.  Of 
these  cellar  homes  14,791  were  in  Manhattan 
alone.  The  law  contains  no  restriction  as  to 
the  number  of  cellar  "  apartments  "  which  may 
exist  in  a  tenement  erected  prior  to  April  10, 
1901.  As  illustrating  something  of  the  condi- 
tions the  Committee  on  the  Congestion  of  Popu- 
lation recently  cited  a  cellar  in  a  block  bounded 
by  Catherine,  Monroe,  Market  and  Hamilton 
Streets  where  twenty  families  lived. 

The  mother  of  one  of  these  families  was  in 
the  Children's  Court  not  long  ago  pleading  for 
the  release  of  one  of  her  five  children,  an  eleven- 
year-old  boy,  who  had  been  arrested  for  selling 
newspapers  on  the  street  at  midnight.  None  of 
her  children  had  been  able  to  get  enough  school- 
ing to  entitle  him  to  a  badge  from  the  Depart- 
ment of  Education  permitting  him  to  sell  papers. 
But  within  one  year  there  had  been  eight  ar- 


140    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

rests  of  her  children  for  selling  newspapers 
without  permits  and  in  prohibited  hours. 

"What  can  I  do?"  pleaded  the  poor  woman. 
"  We  have  not  enough  money  to  pay  the  rent." 

The  father  and  grandfather  had  a  little 
butcher  shop  in  the  neighborhood.  The  rent 
for  their  shop  and  the  cellar  hole  where  they 
lived  aggregated  thirty-eight  dollars  a  month. 
The  biggest  profit  they  had  made  in  any  one 
week  in  two  years  was  eleven  dollars.  An  aged 
grandmother  was  trying  to  help  by  finishing 
men]s  pants.  She  told  me  with  some  little  pride 
that  they  were  "policemen's  pants"  and  that 
she  got  twelve  cents  a  pair  for  them.  That  was 
a  good  price,  as  such  work  goes.  The  rate  paid 
usually  depends  on  the  condition  of  the  labor 
market  and  the  hunger  in  the  stomachs  of 
the  workers;  and  as  overcrowding  of  popula- 
tion means  a  market  always  over-supplied  the 
prices  are  always  correspondingly  meager.  The 
grandmother,  favored  as  she  might  be  by  the 
higher  rate  of  compensation,  was  never  able  to 
finish  more  than  five  pairs  a  day.  Her  bent 
shoulders,  worn  hands,  and  dull  eyes  told  better 


Labeling  the  Business  141 

than  her  words  how  hard  was  her  drudgery. 
The  family  of  nine,  including  the  grandparents, 
was  not  able  to  live  on  the  combined  earnings 
of  the  shop  and  those  of  the  grandmother.  The 
butcher  business  did  not  even  pay  the  rent  of  the 
cellar  and  the  shop.  So  there  was  little  wonder 
the  children  were  sent  into  the  streets  to  sell 
newspapers,  even  though  it  was  against  the  law. 
It  was  that  or  starvation. 

The  bad  air  of  the  cellar  is  certain  to  lead  to 
the  illness  of  some  member  of  that  family  be- 
fore long.  Then  they  will  be  forced  to  visit  the 
Charity  Department.  And  in  many  cases  after 
the  first  application  for  public  aid  there  is  a 
final  weakening  of  whatever  self-respect  the 
mills  of  greed  have  not  ground  out,  and,  giv- 
ing up  the  fight,  the  family  become  willing 
paupers. 

The  death  rate  of  the  second  generation  of  for- 
eigners in  the  congested  districts  of  New  York, 
as  shown  by  Health  Department  investigations, 
is  much  higher  than  the  death  rate  of  their  par- 
ents. In  one  square  block,  inhabited  chiefly  by 
Italians,  it  was  found  in  1906  that  the  children 


142    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

under  the  age  of  five  years  were  dying  off  at  the 
rate  of  92.2  per  thousand.  In  another  square 
block  it  was  87.03  per  thousand.  There  is  a 
wide  difference  in  the  mortality  and  death  rates 
among  children  of  different  nationalities.  The 
Jewish  children  withstand  disease  better  than 
the  children  of  Italian  parents.  The  Italians 
have  a  mortality  from  measles  almost  five  times 
greater  than  that  of  the  children  of  any  other 
nationality.  The  death  rate  from  bronco-pneu- 
monia among  Italian  children  reaches  more  than 
seven  and  one-half  times  the  rate  among  children 
of  American  parents.  Experts  have  long  been 
warning  us  that  the  death  rate  in  the  crowded 
districts  will  go  mounting  up  unless  we  let  more 
light  and  air  into  the  tenements.  They  tell  us 
that  in  every  building  there  should  be  at  least 
400  cubic  feet  for  every  adult  and  300  cubic  feet 
for  every  child  under  twelve  years  of  age.  The 
provision  of  300  cubic  feet  of  air  space  for  each 
tenement  dweller  is  all  that  is  required  now  by 
law,  and  we  know  that  the  law  is  commonly 
violated. 

How  much  better  would  be  the  building  of 


Labeling  the  Business  143 

practical  model  tenements  —  those  already 
built  often  rent  for  sums  far  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  people  for  whom  they  were  meant  —  bet- 
ter than  the  erection  of  libraries,  and  yes,  I  was 
about  to  say  even  hospitals.  For  if  we  gave  the 
people  of  these  districts  better  conditions  we 
would  not  need  so  many  hospitals.  This  does 
not  for  a  moment  mean  that  the  people  should 
be  pauperized.  But  if  philanthropists  would 
provide  houses  that  had  light,  air,  and  a  chance 
for  cleanliness,  and  at  a  rent  reasonable  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  tenant's  earnings,  what 
enduring  monuments  they  would  be  raising  to 
themselves.  The  proper  housing  of  one  human 
being  is  a  greater  help  to  the  community  than 
the  monumental  housing  of  a  ton  of  books. 

It  has  been  demonstrated  by  Mrs.  William  K. 
Vanderbilt  through  her  recently  erected  East 
River  Homes,  in  which  about  300  families  are 
housed,  that  it  is  possible  to  provide  bright,  airy, 
sanitary  apartments,  equipped  with  electric 
lights,  steam  heat  and  baths  at  rents  that  are  no 
higher  than  those  charged  for  some  of  the  old 
cold-water,  no-heat  black  room  flats  in  the  rook- 


144    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

eries.  These  houses  were  not  built  to  make 
money  but  were  intended  primarily  as  homes  for 
tuberculosis  convalescents  and  their  construction 
had  to  meet  peculiar  requirements.  To-day 
there  are  convalescents  in  them  who  pay  no  rent. 
The  tenants  who  are  able-bodied  and  work  pay 
as  much  perhaps  as  tenants  elsewhere,  but  it  is  to 
be  remembered  there  are  no  coal  nor  light  bills  to 
be  met  and  they  live  comfortably  in  sanitary  and 
attractive  surroundings.  Further  experience  in 
the  building  of  this  type  of  houses  will  undoubt- 
edly make  possible  lower  rents  in  them. 

But,  as  we  have  tried  to  make  plain,  this  is 
not,  after  all,  a  proposition  so  much  for  private 
philanthropy  as  for  public  service.  It  is  for  the 
municipality  itself  to  regulate  the  matter  of  the 
tenements  by  adequate  laws  and  their  enforce- 
ment. We  may  appoint  investigating  commis- 
sions, organize  civic  study  clubs,  declare  that  it 
is  all  shocking  and  forget  about  it  next  day, 
and  the  same  things  —  slavery  and  murder  are 
their  real  names  —  will  go  right  on  as  long  as 
public  conscience  sleeps. 

There  is  a  pitiful  lack  of  autonomy  in  the 


Labeling  the  Business  145 

city  departments  that  should  be  able  to  act 
quickly  and  decisively  on  evil  living  conditions. 
To  illustrate  we  shall  cite  a  case  that  was  re- 
cently brought  to  our  attention.  A  family  of 
seven  was  found  living  in  two  small  rooms 
within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  Children's  Court 
and  in  a  fearful  condition  of  filth  and  squalor. 
One  of  the  five  children  was  a  seventeen-year- 
old  boy,  an  imbecile  and  paralytic  from  birth, 
who  lay  in  a  tin  bath  tub  which  the  parents  had 
provided.  He  was  entirely  helpless  and  had 
not  been  moved  from  the  tub,  as  the  parents  ad- 
mitted, in  weeks.  Besides  the  human  inhabi- 
tants there  were  chickens  and  pigeons  in  the 
small  rooms.  While  the  parents  worked  in  a 
neighboring  pickle  factory  a  girl  thirteen  years 
old  was  supposed  to  look  after  the  helpless  im- 
becile as  well  as  to  minister  to  the  wants  of  the 
smaller  children.  When  we  called  there  was  a 
red  hot  stove  in  the  place  and  not  a  window 
open.  Holding  our  breath  we  stepped  into  the 
rooms  when  a  rooster  coming  from  under  a  bed 
flew  to  the  edge  of  the  tub  in  which  the  imbecile 
lay  and  perching  there  an  instant  crowed  lustily. 


146    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

A  hen  was  pecking  from  a  dish  on  the  floor  in 
which  there  was  a  dirty  mixture  of  bread  and 
milk,  evidently  intended  as  food  for  the  unfor- 
tunate boy.  When  we  fled  to  the  hallway  for 
air  the  agent  told  me  that  these  conditions  had 
existed  ever  since  the  family  moved  in,  six 
months  before. 

The  agent  took  all  the  children,  except  the  un- 
fortunate creature  in  the  tub,  to  the  Society 
rooms  on  a  charge  of  improper  guardianship. 
As  the  boy  was  over  sixteen  years  old  the  agent 
had  no  jurisdiction  in  his  case.  We  asked  the 
neighbors  why  he  had  not  been  sent  to  a  hos- 
pital. They  told  us  the  parents  feared  hospitals 
and  would  never  consent  to  his  being  taken 
away.  We  went  to  the  pickle  factory,  found  the 
parents  who  resented  deeply  the  interference  of 
the  Society  and  declared  they  would  never  con- 
sent to  the  boy's  removal.  They  declared  he 
was  receiving  medical  attention  and  when  we 
asked  who  the  doctor  was  they  gave  us  the  name 
of  a  veterinary.  Here  existed  a  flagrant  menace 
to  the  health  of  the  other  tenants  in  the  house, 
as  well  as  to  the  entire  neighborhood. 


Labeling  the  Business  147 

The  Charities  Department  was  told  of  the 
situation  in  detail. 

"We  can  only  place  the  boy  in  a  hospital," 
was  the  reply  of  that  department,  "  if  the  par- 
ents will  consent ;  otherwise  we  can  do  nothing." 

To  the  Tenement  House  Department  we 
turned  next.  No,  that  department  would  do 
nothing,  it  had  no  jurisdiction  in  such  a  case; 
it  probably  belonged  to  the  Department  of 
Charities,  or  the  Department  of  Health.  The 
latter  department  was  tried  next.  They  listened 
patiently,  but  their  answer  was  discouraging. 

"  We  can  take  out  the  pigeons  and  the  chick- 
ens, it  is  against  the  law  to  keep  them  in  a  flat." 
The  policeman  on  post  declared  that  he  had  no 
authority  to  move  the  boy  unless  the  parents 
agreed.  They  had  gone  back  to  the  pickle  fac- 
tory. I  never  eat  a  pickle  now  without  think- 
ing of  that  house. 

Failing  to  receive  cooperation  from  any  city 
department  we  finally  made  bold  to  summon  an 
ambulance  ourselves.  Against  the  protests  of 
the  surgeon  the  lad  was  finally  taken  to  Belle- 
vue  Hospital.    The  authorities  there  said  if  the 


148    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

parents  were  so  disposed  they  could  take  the  boy 
home  as  soon  as  they  discovered  his  where- 
abouts. Within  twenty-four  hours  he  was  back 
again  in  the  tub,  but  at  any  rate  he  had  had  a 
bath.  The  younger  children  were  committed, 
of  course,  to  a  proper  institution,  but  so  far 
as  the  removal  of  the  nuisance  went,  all  our  com- 
plaints had  accomplished  was  the  eviction  of 
the  pigeons  and  the  chickens.  Any  one  of  the 
departments  mentioned  should  have  had  the  au- 
thority to  have  forced  the  immediate  vacation 
of  the  premises.  It  should  be  within  their 
power  to  close  or  demolish  any  house  where  a 
condition  is  found  to  exist  that  is  likely  to  cause 
sickness  or  to  render  the  place  unfit  for  human 
habitation. 

What  a  furbishing,  a  re-building  and  activity 
there  would  be  in  the  tenement  districts  if  a 
plan  recently  brought  forward  by  the  Rev.  Fa- 
ther James  Curry  were  placed  upon  the  statute 
books  —  that  every  owner  should  be  forced  to 
place  on  his  tenement  a  small  sign  giving  his 
name  in  plain  letters!  This  was  proposed  to 
the    Congestion    Commission    and    immediately 


Labeling  the  Business  149 

some  leading  citizens  were  frightened  to  the 
verge  of  prostration.  No  man  wanted  to  see  his 
rickety,  black,  airless,  cold-water  death  trap 
stand  out  as  a  monument  to  his  greed.  To-day 
he  may  hide  behind  the  lessees  — "  leassors,"  as 
their  victims  call  them  —  the  agents  or  dum- 
mies. If  the  owners'  names  appear  at  all  on 
official  records  they  are  hidden  deep  under  legal 
verbiage  and  safe  from  the  ordinary  layman's 
discovery.  The  tenant,  more  often  than  not, 
knows  nothing  of  the  real  owner's  identity. 
The  only  landlord  he  knows  is  the  agent  or  jani- 
tor, each  steel-sheathed  to  any  appeals. 

"  Why,  think  of  the  blackmail  we'd  be  liable 
to ! "  exclaimed  some  of  the  owners  when  the 
label  proposition  was  broached.  There  is  hu- 
mor in  this  protest,  in  the  unconsciousness  of  its 
confession.  These  gentlemen  were  growing 
fearful  for  their  position  in  church,  society  or 
profession.  They  were  asked  if  their  names  did 
not  appear  upon  their  business  offices,  and  if 
that  fact  laid  them  open  to  blackmail.  Oh,  no, 
they  answered  —  but  of  course  with  the  tene- 
ments   it    was    different.     Why?     If    a    man's 


150    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

business  and  his  goods  are  honest,  why  should 
he  be  afraid  to  label  them? 

It  was  after  one  of  these  hearings  that  the 
writer  went  to  a  luncheon  given  by  a  number 
of  avowed  philanthropists  and  to  consider  some 
charitable  object.  There  he  was  buttonholed  by 
a  tenement  owner  and  "  philanthropist,"  who 
spoke  with  extreme  feeling  of  the  ill  effects  to 
property  owners  of  the  proposed  law  and 
begged  that  he  use  all  his  influence  against  it. 
Perhaps  this  charitable  gentleman  kept  his  sense 
of  consistency,  along  with  other  valuables,  in 
safe  deposit  vaults;  but  as  for  the  writer,  if  he 
could  have  his  way,  the  label  law  would  go  into 
effect  to-morrow. 

There  should  be  a  law,  too,  limiting  the  num- 
ber of  sweatshops  and  factories  which  are 
operated  in  a  given  area  —  especially  places  of 
the  type  that  deals  with  piece  work  done  in  the 
home.  The  idea  that  workers  should  live  in  the 
outskirts  while  their  shops  are  in  the  crowded 
districts  may  be  good  in  theory,  but  it  is  almost 
impossible  in  practice.  When  every  penny  and 
every  second  counts,  you  cannot  afford  to  spend 


Labeling  the  Business  151 

five-cent  pieces  and  half-hours  traveling  back 
and  forth  between  home  and  shop.  The  people 
can  move  only  when  the  shops  move.  Some 
businesses  have  gone  to  the  suburbs,  the  work- 
ers with  them,  and  almost  invariably  the  in- 
dustry as  well  as  the  workers  has  profited  by  the 
change.  The  community  has  profited  most  of 
all. 

The  seriousness  of  the  problem  of  the  conges- 
tion of  industries  is  apparent  when  it  is  stated 
that  in  one  assembly  district  in  New  York,  the 
Sixth,  a  little  area  of  eighty-six  acres,  compris- 
ing one  and  three-tenths  per  cent,  of  the  total 
area  of  Manhattan,  there  are  found  massed 
twelve  per  cent,  of  all  the  factories  on  that  is- 
land and  nearly  twelve  per  cent,  of  the  workers. 
In  a  single  block  bounded  by  Prince,  Crosby, 
Broadway  and  East  Houston  Streets,  with  an 
area  of  only  three  and  three-tenths  acres,  there 
were  seventy-seven  factories  in  1908  with  4,007 
workers,  a  density  of  more  than  1,200  workers 
to  the  acre.  About  half  the  buildings  there 
were  twelve  stories  in  height.  Ninety-seven  per 
cent,  of  the  area  was  covered  with  buildings  and 


152    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

the  land  was  worth  more  than  one  million  dol- 
lars an  acre. 

Why  should  not  the  factories  and  homes  of 
those  workers  be  moved  out  where  land  is 
cheaper  and  where  there  is  more  working  and 
living  space?  The  verdict  of  physicians  and  ex- 
perts who  have  studied  the  problem  is  that  500 
cubic  feet  of  air  space  should  be  provided  for 
every  employe  in  a  factory  in  the  daytime,  and 
that  each  night  worker  should  have  not  less  than 
600  cubic  feet  of  air  space.  To-day,  under  the 
factory  law  in  New  York,  only  250  cubic  feet  of 
air  space  are  allowed  for  each  worker.  Space 
has  money  value,  but  what  a  miserably  cheap 
appraisal  our  greed  for  money  leads  us  to  place 
on  a  human  life.  Surely  it  is  within  the  police 
power  of  the  State  to  adopt  and  enforce  measures 
for  the  protection  of  the  health  of  its  largest  num- 
bers. 

The  remedies  already  indicated,  together  with 
others,  to  safeguard  the  health  of  families  and 
the  morals  of  children  were  proposed  to  the  leg- 
islature in  New  York  recently  after  the  Conges- 
tion Committee  had  spent  many  weeks  taking 


Labeling  the  Business  153 

testimony.  But  not  one  item  for  relief  was  per- 
mitted to  go  on  the  statute  books.  The  delin- 
quent community  slept  while  the  real  estate  in- 
terests and  the  professional  politicians  who  did 
their  bidding  strangled  every  measure  submit- 
ted. In  the  meantime  the  herding  of  human  be- 
ings into  the  black  holes  goes  increasingly  on, 
with  the  consequent  slavery,  corruption  of  chil- 
dren, pauperism  and  death. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  DELINQUENT  PARENT 

TT  is  the  delinquent  child  who  is  formally  ar- 
raigned  before  the  judge,  but  often  the  real 
offender  is  the  parent.  The  varieties  of  paren- 
tal delinquency  as  revealed  in  the  Children's 
Courts  are  endless,  and  it  would  seem  that  one 
day  there  must  be  penal  institutions  and  re- 
formatories for  delinquent  parents.  Drastic 
treatment  is  required  to  work  any  change  in 
them  for  they  are  not  the  plastic  material  that 
we  find  the  children.  And  yet  more  often  than 
not  it  is  again  the  community  that  is  responsible. 
The  poverty  and  the  oppressive  conditions 
fostered  by  congestion  are,  of  course,  large  fac- 
tors in  producing  helpless  and  vicious  parents. 
There  is  often  parental  love  and  sacrifice  in  the 
tenements,  however,  far  exceeding  that  known 
in  some  luxurious  homes.  The  majority  of 
poor  parents  do  the  best  they  can  for  their  chil- 

154 


The  Delinquent  Parent         155 

dren  in  spite  of  the  ceaseless  grind  that  is  their 
lot.  And,  as  is  frequently  shown  in  the  Chil- 
dren's Courts,  not  all  the  bad  parents  come  from 
the  houses  of  poverty;  numbers  of  them  live  in 
the  richest  sections. 

It  is  true  that  among  the  toilers  many  think 
only  of  the  day  when  the  child  may  be  put  to 
work.  But  there  are  parents  just  as  selfish, 
just  as  brutal  among  the  rich.  Here  the  father 
is  too  much  engrossed  in  money  getting,  the 
mother  too  occupied  with  her  social  ambitions 
to  spend  time  in  thinking  of  the  children  whose 
entire  care  and  training  are  left  to  paid  em- 
ployes. And  once  in  a  while,  the  child  of  this 
up-bringing  rebels,  deserts  his  unsuccessful 
home  and  winds  up  in  the  Children's  Court. 

The  mother  of  one  lad  who  had  burglarized 
six  houses  in  as  many  weeks  explained  to  the 
Court  that  she  had  been  so  busy  with  social  en- 
gagements that  she  had  no  time  left  to  look  after 
her  son.  The  father  of  another  boy  who  had 
run  away  from  his  home  on  Riverside  Drive  ad- 
mitted to  the  Judge  that  his  son  was  gone  three 
days  before  the  servants  and  the  tutor  thought 


156    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

it  worth  while  to  tell  him.  The  mother  was 
spending  the  winter  in  a  Florida  hotel.  Al- 
though he  slept  under  the  same  roof  with  the 
boy,  the  father  was  often  "  so  busy  "  he  did  not 
see  him  for  a  week  at  a  time.  The  growing  lax- 
ity of  rich  and  poor  in  their  regard  for  parental 
responsibility  demands  serious  thought. 

While  there  are  many  parents  in  the  alien 
colonies  who  are  anxious  to  railroad  their  chil- 
dren off  to  institutions  on  trumped-up  charges, 
and  thus  shift  to  the  State  the  burden  of  main- 
tenance until  the  law  permits  them  to  work, 
there  is  a  corresponding  class  of  wealthy  parents 
who  are  just  as  anxious  to  rid  themselves  of 
the  care  of  their  progeny.  The  institution 
chosen  by  this  latter  class  of  parents  is  of  course 
the  boarding  school.  It  is  astonishing  at  what 
an  early  age  many  of  these  socially  busy 
mothers  are  anxious  to  ship  off  their  boys  and 
girls.  There  are  many  excellent  boarding 
schools  that  deservedly  take  high  rank  in  the 
educational  system;  the  heads  of  many  of  them 
do  inestimable  good;  but  the  usefulness  of 
others  has  been  estimated  solely  by  the  rate  of 


The  Delinquent  Parent         157 

tuition.  The  head  of  one  such  private  school, 
not  far  from  New  York,  who  allowed  his  boys 
to  have  their  own  automobiles  and  to  spend 
their  nights  at  the  Haymarket  instead  of  at 
their  books,  when  questioned  recently,  declared 
that  he  was  "  not  running  a  Sunday  school." 
He  said  that  as  long  as  the  fathers  paid  the  bills 
—  and  in  the  absence  of  any  explicit  instruc- 
tions from  them  —  the  boys  could  do  as  they 
pleased.  He  added :  "  These  boys  haven't  any 
more  comforts  in  their  own  homes  than  they 
have  right  here.  There  isn't  a  single  thing  they 
can't  have  if  they  want  it."  One  cannot  help 
thinking  that  the  charitable  institution  main- 
tained by  the  State,  the  poor  man's  boarding 
school,  is  a  safer  place  for  a  boy's  moral  and 
physical  development  than  such  a  school  as  this 
one. 

A  richly  gowned  woman  led  her  sad  and  ab- 
surdly dressed  little  girl  into  the  Children's 
Court  recently.  She  wanted  summonses  — 
summonses  for  a  lot  of  her  neighbor's  children. 

"  They  have  insulted  my  angel,"  declared  the 
mother    when    she    came    before    the    Judge. 


158    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

"  They've  taunted  her  and  taunted  her  about  her 
hair!" 

The  Court  surveyed  the  sad  little  girl. 

"  Take  off  the  child's  hat,"  ordered  the  Judge. 

Head-gear,  years  too  old  for  the  child,  was  re- 
moved, and  then,  to  the  amazement  of  all,  hair 
once  black,  but  now  of  straw  color,  was  revealed. 
The  mother  had  bleached  the  hair  of  her  eleven- 
year-old  daughter. 

"  I  am  sorry  that  the  taunts  of  the  neighbors' 
children  were  not  directed  solely  at  you,  Mad- 
am," declared  the  Court ;  "  you  are  the  one  who 
should  suffer." 

The  Court  continued  with  terse,  emphatic 
statements  while  the  mother,  summonsless,  hur- 
ried away  with  her  angel.  Her  startled  look  as 
she  fled  the  building  showed  that  her  shallow 
mind  was  working  in  a  way  entirely  new.  But 
that  was  not  the  end  of  it;  the  Court  had  that 
home,  in  an  expensive  apartment,  investigated. 
The  parents  were  placed  under  supervision  with 
the  result  that  to-day  the  child  is  getting  some- 
thing like  a  fair  chance  in  life. 

Much  of  the  parental  helplessness  found  in 


The  Delinquent  Parent         159 

the  alien  colonies  and  the  congested  districts  is 
due  to  ignorance,  to  want  and  its  attendant  ills. 
None  of  these  excuses  can  be  urged  for  the  par- 
ents in  materially  fortunate  homes.  But  it  was 
neither  ignorance  nor  poverty  that  led  the 
mother  of  Jakie  recently  to  make  a  charge  of 
an  "  ungovernable  child "  against  him. 

As  Jakie  stood  before  the  Judge  his  nose  just 
touched  the  rail  of  the  bench.  His  mother,  fat, 
hatless,  in  dirty  calico  dress,  a  shawl  over  her 
shoulders,  and  with  big  diamond  earrings  in 
her  ears,  had  volubly  told  on  the  stand  all  of 
his  grievous  sins.  Jakie  would  not  go  to 
school,  he  often  stayed  out  until  two  or  three 
o'clock  in  the  morning,  he  was  disobedient  and 
the  mother  declared  he  "  was  no  good."  An  in- 
vestigation of  his  school  record  showed  that  he 
had  been  absent  ninety-three  days  since  the  be- 
ginning of  the  term. 

"Why  don't  you  go  to  school?"  the  Judge 
asked. 

As  Jakie  shook  his  head,  the  tip  of  his  nose 
rubbed  back  and  forth  on  the  rail.  The  Court 
waited  patiently.     Jakie  did  not  answer. 


160    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

"  I  do  not  want  to  send  you  away,  but  I'll  have 
to  return  you  to  the  Society  until  you  can  make 
up  your  mind  to  talk  to  me." 

The  defendant  still  rubbed  his  nose,  back  and 
forth  on  the  rail.  This  was  a  new  sensation  and 
gave  him  profound  amusement,  to  judge  from 
the  expression  of  his  face. 

"  Now,  Jakie,  this  is  your  last  chance  to-day, 
I  have  many  cases  waiting  —  are  you  going  to 
answer  me  or  not?" 

The  vibration  of  Jakie's  head  did  not  cease  at 
once,  but  in  a  moment  he  cast  a  furtive  glance  at 
the  Court.  That  was  sufficient,  the  Court  was 
not  to  be  trifled  with.  Then  he  threw  back  his 
head  and  declared  desperately: 

"  The  teacher  says  I  stink !  " 

The  Court  arose  and  took  a  more  careful  in- 
ventory of  Jakie. 

"We  had  to  soak  and  scrub  that  boy  for  two 
hours  when  he  was  brought  to  the  rooms  this 
morning,"  declared  the  Society's  representative, 
"  and  I  don't  believe  we've  got  all  the  dirt  off 
yet."  He  pointed  to  a  dark  line  beneath  the 
hair  that  had  been  close-cropped.     "  I  guess  it 


The  Delinquent  Parent  161 

will  take  sandpaper  before  that  job  is  finished," 
was  the  agent's  observation. 

The  Court  in  its  thorough  examination  finally 
discovered  that  the  mother  and  father  of  this 
boy  were  human  leeches,  "  leassors,"  as  they  are 
known  to  their  poor  tenement  victims.  They 
were  the  lessees  or  extortion  agents  who  ground 
the  rent  out  of  the  tenants  of  two  big  houses,  one 
in  Rivington  and  the  other  in  Clinton  streets. 
The  real  owner  lived  uptown  in  one  of  the  fash- 
ionable neighborhoods.  The  diamond  earrings 
of  Jakie's  mother  attested  the  success  with 
which  she  and  her  husband  carried  on  the  busi- 
ness. They  were  not  satisfied,  however,  with 
their  income  and  it  was  the  parents  who  were 
responsible  for  the  boy's  being  out  so  late  each 
night;  they  forced  him  to  sell  papers.  They 
cared  little  whether  he  went  to  school  or  not, 
and  because  of  the  loss  of  sleep  the  boy  found 
school  work  so  hard  that  he  had  been  on  "the 
hook,"  as  he  confessed,  most  of  the  time.  The 
mother  and  father  had  absolutely  no  regard  for 
his  physical  condition  and  although  the  rooms 
they  occupied  in  Rivington  Street  were  fairly 


162    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

comfortable  and  there  was  no  dearth  of  water 
in  their  apartment,  such  as  existed  throughout 
the  other  flats  in  the  house,  Jakie  could  not  re- 
member when  he  had  had  a  bath  or  even  had  his 
face  washed  in  his  own  home.  It  was  little  won- 
der that  his  presence  in  class  on  the  few  days 
that  he  did  attend  school  was  rather  disconcert- 
ing to  the  teacher  and  to  the  other  pupils.  The 
truant  officers  had  long  been  struggling  with 
these  parents,  and  when  they  finally  saw  that  it 
would  no  longer  be  possible  to  profit  from  the 
boy's  sales  of  papers  they  decided  to  send  him 
away  and  rid  themselves  of  his  support.  But 
it  did  not  work  out  quite  as  easily  as  they  had 
imagined.  Not  only  Jakie,  but  his  two  brothers 
and  sister  were  committed  to  an  institution  be- 
cause of  improper  guardianship.  And  to  the 
immense  surprise  and  dismay  of  the  parents  an 
order  was  entered  by  the  Court  against  the  fa- 
ther to  pay  to  the  city  $2.35  a  week  for  the  main- 
tenance of  each  child,  exactly  what  it  costs  the 
city  to  keep  them  in  the  institutions  to  which 
they  were  committed. 
Another  mother  of  this  type  when  told  by  the 


The  Delinquent  Parent         163 

Court  that  her  boy  had  been  absent  from  school 
for  one  solid  year  and  asked  to  explain,  ex- 
pressed mild  surprise  and  replied  with  a  shrug 
of  her  shoulders: 

"  Does  he  vant  to  be  a  lawyer,  does  he  vant 
to  be  a  doctor?  " 

Still  another  mother  when  informed  that  her 
hopeful  had  been  a  truant  for  seven  months  of- 
fered the  excuse: 

"  Maybe  he  wasn't  feeling  good." 

A  great,  hulking,  six  foot  Austrian  applied  to 
the  Children's  Court  for  a  warrant  for  his  son. 
He  declared  that  the  boy  would  not  go  to  school, 
smoked  cigarettes,  and  added  with  outraged 
feelings : 

"  He  makes  bad  talk  at  me." 

To  the  Court's  question  as  to  the  boy's  age, 
the  father  replied  gravely  that  he  was  all  of 
eight. 

"  Do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  a  giant  like  you 
can't  handle  an  eight-year-old  boy?"  demanded 
the  Court. 

The  father  calmly  shook  his  head. 

"  Don't  you  ever  punish  him? " 


164    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

"  Every  time  I  go  near  that  boy  he  threatens 
to  jump  off  the  roof  and  kill  himself,"  Was  the 
reply. 

In  such  fear  too,  of  his  tiny  son  was  this  six- 
footer  that  he  would  not  undertake  to  bring  him 
to  court  but  wanted  an  officer  to  go  after  him 
with  a  warrant.  The  giant  seemed  to  have  lost 
several  inches  in  stature  when  the  Court  finished 
with  him. 

Unbelievable  as  it  may  seem,  there  have  been 
mothers  who  admitted  to  the  Court  that  they  did 
not  know  how  many  children  they  had.  One 
mother  when  asked  as  to  the  size  of  her  family 
answered : 

"  Me  no  know.  I  stop  count  when  I  got 
'leven."    Then,  with  a  sniff  she  asked : 

"Whatdedifif?" 

It  didn't  seem  to  make  much  difference  to  her, 
but  it  did  to  the  State.  An  attempt  to  round  up 
the  children  of  this  family,  fourteen  in  number, 
led  the  investigators  into  pool  rooms,  which  were 
really  Fagin  schools,  barrel  dives,  dance  halls, 
moving  picture  places  and  institutions  —  the  nat- 
ural results  of  being  mothered  only  by  the  streets. 


The  Delinquent  Parent         165 

Someone  will  say  this  is  a  proof  of  the  law  of 
heredity.  Not  at  all ;  these  children  were  victims 
of  an  environment  for  which  the  parents  were 
chiefly  responsible.  It  was  not  a  blood  taint 
from  within  working  out,  but  a  contamination 
from  without  working  in. 

The  son  of  a  religious  teacher  was  arrested 
for  picking  pockets.  His  skill  was  attained  after 
months  of  training. 

"  Didn't  you  know  that  your  boy  was  spend- 
ing most  of  his  time  with  a  gang  of  thieves?" 
asked  the  Court. 

"  No,  I  am  so  busy  with  my  teaching  I  didn't 
have  time  to  look  after  my  boy,"  replied  the 
father. 

Can  there  be  any  question  about  the  need  of  a 
penal  institution  for  such  parents  as  these? 

And  as  rather  a  refreshing  note  in  all  the 
tragedy  we  may  add  this  letter  from  one  of  the 
children  anxious  to  supplement  parental  incom- 
petence for  his  own  benefit: 

"  Judge,  please  tell  my  mother  to  keep  me  in. 
If  she  keeps  me  in  I'll  stay  all  right :  I  won't  go 
out,  then  I  won't  get  in  any  more  trouble." 


166    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

Often  in  the  densely  congested  districts,  and 
particularly  in  the  alien  colonies,  the  father  and 
mother  who  have  had  a  boy  committed  to  an  in- 
stitution —  regardless  of  the  charge  —  are  looked 
upon  with  envy  by  their  neighbors.  Many  a  child 
has  unwittingly  told  of  the  collusion  by  which 
his  parents  hoped  to  have  him  "  put  away." 
Fortunately  the  laws  have  been  amended  in  some 
States  so  that  the  courts  may,  at  their  discretion, 
place  the  father  of  a  child  sent  to  an  institution 
under  an  order  to  pay  in  whole  or  in  part  for  his 
maintenance.  If  the  father  is  able  to  pay  and 
does  not  obey  the  order  he  may  be  sent  to  prison. 
This  legislation  has  done  much  to  cut  down  the 
number  of  false  charges  made  by  parents  against 
their  own  children.  But  even  with  these  pre- 
cautions, strange  resourcefulness  is  at  times  dis- 
played in  efforts  to  force  the  State  to  care  for 
children  until  they  have  attained  working  age 
and  the  parents  can  safely  profit  by  the  child's 
earnings. 

A  woman  with  a  seven-months-old  baby  in  her 
arms  applied  to  one  of  the  bureaus  of  the  Chari- 
ties Department  for  help  and  for  the  commitment 


The  Delinquent  Parent         167 

of  the  infant.  She  told  a  story  of  a  husband 
dying  at  home  of  consumption,  of  everything 
having  been  pawned  to  provide  food  and  medi- 
cine. If  the  city  would  take  the  child  she  would 
be  able  to  go  out  to  work.  An  examiner  was 
sent  hurrying  down  to  the  dingy  tenement. 
After  climbing  five  flights  of  stairs  he  found  the 
dying  consumptive,  the  woman  and  her  baby 
in  a  room  that  had  been  stripped  of  everything 
except  the  bed  in  which  the  man  lay,  the  covers 
on  it  and  a  wooden  leg  conspicuously  near. 
Asked  about  the  wooden  leg  the  mother  weep- 
ingly  told  how  her  husband  had  met  with  a  blast- 
ing accident  before  the  consumption  had  de- 
veloped. The  combination  of  misfortunes  as 
related  by  the  woman  made  the  examiner  suspi- 
cious. He  lifted  the  covers  at  the  foot  of  the  bed. 
Two  legs  were  revealed,  both  just  as  sound  as 
legs  on  a  consumptive  in  that  stage  of  the  dis- 
ease could  be.  The  consumptive  was  not  the 
husband  of  the  woman,  neither  was  he  the  father 
of  the  child.  He  was  a  neighbor  who  had  hired 
out  his  services  for  the  day.  The  wooden  leg 
belonged  to  a  professional  mendicant  who  lived 


168    The  Children  in  the  Sha3ow 

in  the  next  block.  He  had  no  use  for  it  on  this 
particular  day.  In  fact  he  used  it  only  occa- 
sionally on  Sundays  when  he  went  for  a  day's 
outing  and  stumped  up  and  down  the  boardwalk 
at  Coney  Island.  All  of  his  "  working "  time 
was  spent  on  a  busy  street  corner  with  his 
stump  of  a  leg  extended  while  he  caught  in  his 
hat  the  pennies  of  the  sympathizing  passers-by. 
The  mendicant  had  originally  obtained  the  leg 
from  the  city's  charity.  Nor  had  the  plot  to  de- 
ceive the  city  been  the  product  of  real  poverty 
in  this  case,  for  the  father  had  steady  employ- 
ment at  fair  wages. 

Desertion,  carefully  pre-arranged  by  parents 
in  order  to  get  their  children  into  the  "  collegio  " 
or  the  "  waisenhaus,"  is  a  growing  evil  with 
which  the  charities  bureaus  have  to  contend.  As 
has  been  said,  the  courts  have  some  means  of 
dealing  with  those  who  try  to  shift  the  burden 
of  the  child's  maintenance  upon  the  State.  But 
in  these  cases  of  family  desertion  coming  before 
the  Charities  Department  there  is  no  efficient 
remedy.  And  it  is  another  result  of  pernicious 
living  conditions  and  of  poverty  in  the  crowded 


The  Delinquent  Parent         169 

districts.  The  family  is  unable  to  live  on  the 
sweatshop  wage  or  on  the  peddler's  meager  in- 
come. The  big  family  is  a  millstone  about  the 
parental  neck.  The  father  disappears.  The 
mother  and  the  children,  perhaps  a  half-dozen  or 
more,  apply  at  the  end  of  the  month  to  the  Chil- 
dren's Bureau  of  the  Department  of  Charities. 
She  is  about  to  be  dispossessed,  they  are  without 
food.  There  is  nothing  to  do  but  to  send  all  the 
children,  save  one,  to  charitable  institutions, 
there  to  be  supported  by  the  city.  By  an  arbi- 
trary rule  of  the  Department  an  only  child  or  the 
last  child  will  not  be  taken  away  from  a  mother. 
Employment  will  be  provided  where  she  can  take 
this  child.  But  the  city  has  now  relieved  the 
family  of  five  children.  Within  another  month 
or  two,  perhaps  the  mother  has  disappeared. 
She  has  known  all  along  where  her  husband  was 
and  probably  he  has  been  sending  her  money 
through  friends.  He  has  changed  his  name  and 
perhaps  has  been  working  in  a  coal  cellar  or  a 
sweatshop  in  another  colony  of  his  own  national- 
ity. It  may  be  he  has  gone  to  a  near-by  city.  At 
any  rate  the  father  and  mother  re-unite  in  time. 


170    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

They  are  rid  of  all  but  one  of  their  children  and 
the  city  is  forced  to  support  the  others  for  years 
in  one  of  its  institutions. 

There  are  numerous  desertions  of  wives  and 
children,  too,  by  fathers  who  are  not  considerate 
enough  to  consult  their  wives  about  it  first.  The 
desertion  habit  is  growing  so  that  the  charity  au- 
thorities are  alarmed  at  it.  So  effectively  are 
the  deserters  concealed  in  the  mazes  of  crowded 
colonies  that  it  is  seldom  they  are  caught.  The 
cost  to  New  York  County  alone  for  the  mainte- 
nance of  children  committed  to  its  various  public 
institutions  is  considerably  more  than  two  mil- 
lions a  year.  Ten  thousand  children  are  pro- 
posed to  the  Children's  Bureau  of  that  one 
county  each  year  for  commitment,  and  between 
twenty-five  and  thirty  per  cent,  of  these  cases 
arise,  according  to  the  head  of  that  Bureau, 
from  family  desertion.  It  is  added  by  the  same 
authority  that  twenty-five  per  cent,  of  those  ap- 
plying for  the  commitment  of  their  children  have 
never  taken  the  first  steps  toward  becoming 
citizens. 

The  readiness  with  which  parents  of  the  de- 


The  Delinquent  Parent         171 

linquent  type  turn  to  an  accommodating  munic- 
ipality to  save  them  the  trouble  of  controlling 
their  own  children  is  shown  by  the  following 
letter  recently  addressed  to  the  "  Hon.  Superin- 
tendent of  the  Children's  Courts  " : 

Dear  Sir: 

I  call  your  immediate  attention  in  my  child  12  years  old 
who  was  18  months  in  your  institute.     He  go  no  school  and 
give  too  much  noise  everybody.     I  beg  you  send  a  policeman 
and  send  him  again  in  Penitentiary. 
With  best  regards,  I  am, 

Yours  respectfully, 

W G 

The  wording  of  this  appeal  may  be  unique 
but  its  spirit  is  common.  It  is  apparent  from 
the  letter  that  this  solicitous  parent's  son  was 
not  more  than  ten  and  a  half  when  he  was  first 
sent  to  an  institution.  Sometimes  such  parents 
haul  six-year-old  infants  to  court  as  incorrigi- 
bles  in  the  ingenuous  belief  that  they  are  thus 
going  to  be  rid  of  them.  It  is  such  parents,  too, 
who  do  much  toward  bolstering  up  the  birth 
rate  that  Fifth  Avenue  fails  to  support. 

There  are  occasional  parents  who  lock  their 


172    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

children  in  or  tie  them  up  when  they  are  to  be 
away  from  home.  Four  forlorn  little  creatures 
were  discovered  last  summer  locked  in  a  flat 
where  they  had  been  left  for  five  days  while  the 
father  and  mother  were  having  a  vacation  at 
Coney  Island.  The  eldest  child,  a  little  girl  of 
eleven,  had  been  ordered  to  do  the  cooking  and 
to  take  care  of  the  house.  Then  there  is  the 
more  common  class  of  parents  who  are  so  greedy 
for  money  that  they  send  their  children  to  work 
in  violation  of  law  and  take  every  cent  from 
them  at  the  end  of  the  week.  Working  boys 
have  sometimes  confessed  that  they  have  stolen 
because  their  parents  had  not  even  allowed  them 
car-fare.  It  is  against  the  law  in  New  York  for 
children  to  peddle,  and  yet  there  is  scarcely  a 
busy  corner  in  the  downtown  sections  where 
children  may  not  be  seen  daily  offering  various 
wares  for  sale.  The  parents  in  nearly  every 
case  know  that  these  youngsters  are  peddling 
and  that  it  is  in  violation  of  law.  It  is  the  par- 
ents, too,  who  usually  get  all  the  profits. 

A  father,  one  of  whose  sons  had  been  sent  to 
an  institution  because  of  persistent  peddling  in 


The  Delinquent  Parent         173 

violation  of  law,  had  a  second  son  arrested  for 
a  similar  offense. 

"  And  you  are  back  here  again  after  all  I  told 
you?  "  exclaimed  the  Judge  on  seeing  this  parent. 
"  You  were  warned  what  would  happen  if  you 
sent  your  boys  out  to  peddle." 

"  Yes,  but  that  was  the  other  boy.  You  sent 
him  away.     This  boy  was  never  here  before." 

Then  there  are  the  parents  who  profit  by  the 
stealings  of  their  children.  A  majority  of  them, 
perhaps,  have  not  deliberately  taught  their  chil- 
dren to  steal,  but  by  accepting  without  question 
the  money  that  has  been  turned  over  to  them 
they  are,  of  course,  morally  guilty.  Occasionally 
a  boy  is  found  who  has  confessed  that  his  own 
father  and  mother  have  instructed  him  in  the 
gentle  art  of  grand  larceny.  But  in  the  ma- 
jority of  cases  the  little  pickpockets  have  been 
trained  by  outsiders. 

A  woman  appeared  in  the  Children's  Court 
to  complain  that  her  son's  boy  companion  had 
stolen  eight  hundred  and  twenty-four  dollars 
from  her.  The  money  had  in  reality  been  stolen 
by  the  two  boys,  who  were  skillful  pickpockets, 


174    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

from  the  chatelaine  bag  of  a  lady  walking 
through  Fourteenth  Street.  It  happened  that 
the  victim  of  the  larceny  was  a  woman  of  title 
who  was  on  a  visit  to  New  York;  that  possibly 
accounts  for  the  fact  that  she  had  so  much 
money  in  her  purse  at  one  time.  The  real  trou- 
ble in  the  mind  of  the  mother  who  was  the  com- 
plaining witness,  was  that  she  and  her  son  had 
not  received  a  full  share  of  the  booty  from  the 
other  boy.  She  believed  that  if  she  threatened 
him  with  arrest  she  would  succeed  in  getting  an 
equal  division.  The  complaining  mother,  of 
course,  did  not  say  anything  about  the  pocket 
picking,  evidently  believing  that  as  the  other 
boy  was  guilty  too  he  would  be  afraid  to  mention 
it.  She  simply  alleged  that  the  money  had  been 
taken  from  her  home  by  her  son's  companion. 
It  was  a  bold  stroke  but  it  failed,  for  after  a 
careful  investigation  the  whole  story  came  out. 
Both  boys  were  sent  to  reformatories,  such  of 
the  stolen  money  as  was  left  was  returned  to 
the  owner  and  the  complaining  mother  was  sent  to 
prison.  But  this,  of  course,  is  one  of  the  un- 
common  forms  of  parental  crime.    As  to  the 


The  Delinquent  Parent         175 

pickpockets,  they  form  a  study  in  themselves 
and  will  be  the  subject  of  a  later  chapter. 

Here  have  been  set  down  just  a  few  things 
that  may  serve  to  shed  a  little  light  on  parental 
delinquency.1 

There  are  thousands  of  delinquent  parents  — 
some  selfish,  some  slothful,  some  neglectful,  and 
many  of  them  not  deserving  of  much  sympathy. 
The  criticism  is  sometimes  made  that  a  too  will- 
ing State,  in  the  profusion  of  its  bureaucratic  ac- 

1  Among  the  instances  of  extreme  cruelty  this  affidavit 
sent  to  the  Society  needs  no  comment :  "  This  is  to  certify 
that  I  have  this  day  made  a  physical  examination  of  the 

person  of  L D ,  aged  9  years,  of  Avenue  A, 

Manhattan,   and  found  the   following  injuries: 

Back:     Six  (6)  contusions  from  1"  square  to  2"x3"  in 

area. 
Chest:    Two  (2)  contusions  2"  square. 
Right  Arm:     One   (1)   contusion,  f"  square. 
One  (1)   abrasion,  \"  square. 
Left  Arm :     One  ( 1 )  contusion  extending  from  shoulder  to 
forearm  11"  by  4"  in  area,  made  up  of 
many  contusions  interlacing. 
Two   (2)   abrasions,  \"  square. 
Right  Leg:     One  (1)   2"x3"  in  area. 
Left  Leg:    Thirteen   (13)  contusions  from  1£"  square  to 

2"x3"  in  area. 
These  injuries  are  about  one  week  old  and  were  caused, 
in  my  opinion,  by  an  assault  with  some  weapon. 
Respectfully  submitted, 

(Signed)  W.  Travers  Gibb, 

Examining  Physician. 
It  was  the  mother  who  had  used  the  weapon. 


176    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

tivities,  is  breaking  down  parental  obligation. 
But  how,  when  such  neglect  and  indifference  as 
we  have  described  exists,  can  the  State  refuse  to 
step  in?  For,  after  all,  our  hope  lies  in  the  chil- 
dren. The  home  is  the  place  for  the  child,  and  the 
father  and  mother  should  be  his  best  guardians. 
The  home  must  be  bad  indeed  not  to  be  better 
than  the  best  institution  ever  created;  it  is  the 
natural  growing  place  for  the  young  human  be- 
ing. And  yet  present  day  living  conditions 
among  rich  and  poor  in  the  great  cities  do  seem 
to  be  breaking  down  much  of  the  good,  old-fash- 
ioned notions  of  parental  responsibilities. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  CHILD  OF  BONDAGE 

fTlHERE  are  more  than  two  million  children 
A  in  this  country  whose  future  efficiency  is  be- 
ing imperiled  by  the  labor  that  is  forced  from 
them  before  they  are  old  enough  to  toil.  The 
exploitation  of  child  labor  in  sweatshop,  tene- 
ment, factory  and  mine  is  a  national  crime. 
The  bones  of  these  children  are  not  yet  hardened, 
their  muscles  and  their  brains  are  still  un- 
formed ;  yet  they  are  forced  to  work  at  loom  and 
furnace,  breaker  and  needle,  sacrificing  future 
health  and  usefulness  under  the  pressure  of 
man's  greed.  Fatigue  results  in  muscular  de- 
generation, their  minds  are  either  stunted  or 
warped,  and  the  result  we  too  often  see  in  the 
adult  is  a  dangerous  revolt  against  society. 
This  vast  army  of  pitiful  child  toilers  suffers 
from  a  triple  affliction;  the  selfishness  of  em- 
ployers, the  ignorance  of  parents  and  the  neglect 

177 


178    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

of  the  State,  for  it  is  a  subject  with  which  the 
State  should  deal. 

From  the  shrimp  packing  houses  of  the  Gulf 
to  the  cotton  mills  of  New  England,  these  chil- 
dren, many  thousands  of  them  hardly  in  their 
teens,  are  having  their  growth  stunted,  their 
bones  made  crooked,  their  backs  bent,  by  toil 
that  belongs  to  men.  One  hundred  years  ago 
England  tried  to  build  up  a  great  industry  on 
the  labor  of  little  children  through  excessive 
hours.  She  is  still  paying  the  price.  The  same 
evil  is  here  to-day  and  it  is  enfeebling  national 
vitality. 

It  is  only  within  the  past  decade  that  any- 
thing like  a  general  movement  has  been  started 
for  the  regulation  of  child  labor  —  and  this  by 
private  organizations.  The  National  Child  La- 
bor Committee  has  made  some  impression  on  the 
bulwarks  set  up  by  the  industrial  interests  in 
the  various  States.  But  to  show  how  strongly 
these  interests  are  still  intrenched  we  have  but 
to  turn  to  the  spectacle  of  Florida.  Here  a 
child  labor  bill  has  been  fought  by  the  packing 
industries  who  argued  that  the  five-  and  six- 


The  Child  of  Bondage  179 

year-old  children  working  in  the  shrimp  and 
oyster  canneries  needed  no  protection  because 
the  work  was  not  hard  —  besides,  the  children 
were  not  Florida  children,  but  were  "  little  for- 
eigners from  Baltimore."  These  children,  some 
of  them  mere  babies,  have  regularly  been  im- 
ported into  Florida  at  the  opening  of  the  pack- 
ing season.  The  sharp  oyster  shells  cut  their 
fingers,  the  acid  or  some  secretion  in  the  shrimp 
ate  away  the  skin  and  the  tender  flesh.  And  as 
a  great  concession  the  packers  offered  an  amend- 
ment to  the  child  labor  bill  —  that  instead  of 
protecting  children  under  fourteen  years,  the  age 
limit  should  be  made  eight  years  for  all  indus- 
tries. This,  presumably,  they  thought  would 
serve  to  keep  the  agitators  quiet. 

In  our  great  cities  thousands  of  children  are 
being  transformed  into  old  men  and  women  be- 
fore they  are  out  of  their  teens  by  the  strain  of 
piece  work  done  in  the  homes.  The  industry  in 
which  the  children  of  the  tenements  are  chiefly 
exploited  is  that  of  finishing  ready-made  gar- 
ments. New  York  is  the  great  garment  making 
center  of  the  world.     But  there  are  many  other 


180    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

lines  in  which  the  labor  of  children  of  tender 
years  is  employed. 

The  manufacturers  who  profit  by  home  labor 
are  ever  ready  to  fight  any  proposition  to  upset 
it.  By  the  spreading  of  their  factories  through 
innumerable  bedrooms  and  kitchens  they  are 
saving  rent,  light,  heat  and  furnishings  as  well 
as  the  cost  of  shop  supervision.  They  are  also 
saving  themselves  from  liability  for  employing 
children  under  the  legal  working  age.  It  is  im- 
possible for  factory  inspectors  to  invade  the 
homes  and  take  away  the  little  children  em- 
ployed there.  Conviction  cannot  easily  be 
obtained  against  the  contractor  who  has  sent  his 
piece  work  into  these  bedrooms  and  kitchens. 
His  easy  argument  is  that  the  work  is  intended 
for  the  parents  and  that  if  they  choose  to  enlist 
the  aid  of  their  children  it  is  their  own  affair: 
and  he  is  not  responsible. 

So  it  is  that  the  home-work  system  has  been 
spreading  until  any  observer  going  through  the 
crowded  tenement  streets  may  see  in  every  block 
women  and  children  bearing  great  bundles  be- 
tween workshop  and  home.     The  evils  of  the  sys- 


The  Child  of  Bondage  181 

tem  are  its  life.  The  unrestricted  hours  of  work 
and  the  employment  of  children  are  the  things 
that  make  it  profitable  for  the  manufacturer. 
There  is  a  sliding  scale  of  wages  but  they  al- 
ways slide  downward.  In  proportion  to  the 
urgency  of  the  needs  of  the  applicant  for  piece 
work  the  wage  is  lowered. 

A  family  of  five  was  recently  found  huddled 
in  a  hall  bedroom  binding  roses  into  garlands 
for  ladies'  hats ;  they  got  ten  cents  for  every  720 
roses  made  into  garlands.  Were  it  possible  for 
the  consumer  to  see  under  what  conditions  some 
goods  are  made  rushes  at  the  bargain  counters 
would  not  be  so  frequent. 

The  making  of  willow  plumes  for  a  time  was 
an  extensive  tenement  industry.  This  work  con- 
sists in  tying  to  every  strand  of  a  good  ostrich 
feather  two  strands  stripped  from  inferior 
feathers  and  involves  the  tying  of  innumerable 
delicate  knots;  it  is  paid  for  by  the  inch  meas- 
ured on  the  stem  of  the  original  feather.  One 
investigator  of  the  National  Child  Labor  Com- 
mittee reported  that  the  workers  received  one 
cent  for  every  forty-one  of  these  delicate  knots 


182    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

tied.  It  required  from  one  and  one-half  to  two 
days  to  make  an  eighteen-inch  feather.  For 
this  the  worker  received  about  seventy-five  cents. 
In  the  stores  such  a  feather  costs  from  eight  and 
a  half  to  twenty-five  dollars  according  to  the 
quality  of  the  material. 

Children  have  frequently  been  found  tucking 
and  putting  together  children's  white  dresses  at 
fifty  cents  a  dozen.  The  retail  price  of  these 
same  dresses  in  the  stores  has  been  found  to  be 
$1.69  apiece.  An  official  investigation  recently 
found  that  the  average  earnings  of  home-work- 
ers' families  in  the  clothing  trade  was  $3.67  a 
week,  while  the  artificial  flower  makers  earned 
$2.07  a  week.  A  Government  report  on  the  situ- 
ation in  New  York  says :  "  The  compensation 
which  the  home-workers  receive  for  their  labor 
is,  as  a  rule,  such  that  they  do  not  earn  enough 
to  provide  even  the  shelter,  food  and  raiment  es- 
sential to  maintain  a  moderate  standard  of  phys- 
ical efficiency." 

The  "  finishing "  on  which  many  women  and 
children  are  employed  in  New  York  means  what- 
ever hand  sewing  is  necessary  to  complete  the 


The  Child  of  Bondage  183 

garment  after  the  operating  and  basting  have 
been  done.  It  consists  usually  in  felling  the  lin- 
ing to  the  cloth,  where  this  has  not  already  been 
done  by  machine.  When  this  work  is  done  in  the 
homes  it  is  called  "  home  finishing."  Coat  fin- 
ishing usually  consists  in  felling  the  lining  at 
the  arm  holes,  at  the  bottom  and  at  the  neck; 
sometimes  the  part  turned  up  at  the  bottom  is 
herring-boned;  frequently  the  under  collar  is 
also  felled  on  and,  on  higher  grade  garments, 
the  collar  is  "  stoted,"  a  distinctive  sort  of  fell- 
ing. Frequently  the  finisher  is  required  to  pull 
out  the  bastings  also. 

The  finisher  on  pants  has  to  line  the  pants  at 
the  waist  line,  fell  the  lining  at  the  top,  tack  it 
at  the  pocket,  and  sometimes  fell  the  pocket  at 
the  seam ;  put  the  rubber  composition  in  the  por- 
tion of  the  leg  which  is  turned  up  to  form  the 
bottom  —  although  the  bottoms  may  be  felled 
by  a  separate  shop  hand.  Frequently  the  home- 
worker  has  to  sew  the  buckles  to  the  buckle 
strap  and  sew  on  the  buttons. 

Many  believe  that  home  finishing  is  confined 
to  a  cheap  grade  of  garments  or  to  such  as  are 


184    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

made  by  contractors.  This  notion  is  wrong. 
It  is  resorted  to  by  the  makers  of  all  grades  of 
ready-made  clothing,  by  leading  manufacturers 
who  maintain  large  inside  shops  as  well  as  by 
the  small  contractors.  Even  with  firms  that 
advertise  "  No  sweatshop  goods.  All  goods 
made  in  our  own  shops  "  much  of  the  finishing, 
according  to  a  Government  report,  is  done  in 
homes. 

A  friend  of  the  writer  one  day  followed  an 
Italian  woman  who  was  staggering  along  under 
a  load  of  unfinished  clothing  for  blocks.  She 
was  forced  to  stop  now  and  then  to  get  breath, 
resting  the  load  she  carried  on  her  head  against 
the  side  of  a  building.  She  did  not  dare  lower 
it  to  the  sidewalk  for  fear  she  would  not  be  able 
again  to  get  under  the  burden.  She  dragged 
herself  and  her  load  up  four  flights  of  stairs  of 
a  dark  tenement.  The  man  who  had  followed 
her  waited  for  a  time  and  then  knocked.  There 
was  a  commotion  inside  and  when  the  door  was 
finally  opened  the  visitor  saw  that  an  attempt 
had  been  made  to  conceal  the  boys'  pants  on 
which  the  woman  and  her  five  children  were 


Burdens  too  heavy  for  childish  arms.     Their  mothers 
are  at  work  in  the  sweatshops 


On  the  way  "home"  with  the  task  that  will  make  old 
men  and  women  of  little  children 


The  Child  of  Bondage  185 

working.  But  it  was  impossible  to  hide  them; 
there  was  clothing  everywhere.  They  feared  it 
was  an  inspector  from  the  State  Labor  Depart- 
ment. Keally  there  was  little  cause  to  look  for 
such  an  official,  for  when  this  was  written  there 
were  only  fifteen  in  the  entire  State  and  there 
are  more  than  13,000  licensed  tenements  —  that 
is,  houses  in  which  the  law  gives  the  right  to 
carry  on  home  manufactures.  The  law  calls  for 
two  inspections  each  year  and  the  Labor  Com- 
missioner frankly  admits  that  it  is  impossible 
to  make  more  than  one. 

The  mother,  finally  convinced  that  the  visitor 
was  not  an  inspector,  told  how  she  and  her 
family,  although  they  often  worked  far  into  the 
night,  never  knew  how  the  rent  was  to  be  met 
nor  where  the  next  meal  was  coming  from. 
Her  worn  and  wasted  face,  the  weary  pallor  of 
the  children,  told  the  story  better  than  her 
words.  The  husband  was  a  peddler  and  his 
earnings  averaged  about  five  dollars  a  week. 
They  had  been  in  the  country  little  more  than 
three  years.  None  of  the  children  could  obtain 
working  papers.     They  had  not  been  in  school 


186    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

long  enough.  Every  minute  they  were  not  in 
school  or  sleeping,  and  sleep  in  these  days  was 
curtailed,  they  were  slaving.  It  was  by  the 
hardest  kind  of  driving  that  among  them  they 
were  able  to  finish  twelve  dozen  pairs  of  boys' 
pants  in  twenty-four  hours.  Frequently  the 
mother  was  forced  to  keep  one  or  two  children 
out  of  school  to  do  this.  The  truant  officer  had 
been  inquiring  about  Mike  the  week  before. 

"  What  will  we  do  if  they  take  Mike  away?  " 
asked  one  of  the  older  little  girls  anxiously. 
"  Mike  is  the  quickest  worker.  If  Mike  was 
sent  away  we  couldn't  live  in  this  house." 

That  meant  they  would  be  put  into  the  street, 
for  they  couldn't  well  find  a  cheaper  or  more 
miserable  apartment.  Mike,  the  reliable,  was 
at  that  minute  felling  a  lining,  his  fingers  mov- 
ing with  startling  rapidity  and  more  like  a  ma- 
chine than  anything  that  was  human.  He  did 
not  even  glance  up.  There  was  a  sullen  look  in 
the  boy's  face  that  made  the  visitor  think  he 
might  perhaps  one  day  develop  into  a  very  dan- 
gerous machine.  And  when  the  family  had  fin- 
ished one  dozen  boys'  pants  how  much  do  you 


The  Child  of  Bondage  187 

suppose  they  got  for  them?  It  seems  almost  un- 
believable but  is  nevertheless  true  that  the  rate 
of  pay  was  eight  cents  a  dozen  pairs.  In  other 
words,  this  mother  labored  from  six  or  seven 
o'clock  in  the  morning  until  ten  or  eleven 
o'clock  at  night,  with  the  assistance  of  her  five 
children  when  they  were  not  in  school,  and  they 
were  able  to  make  by  this  ceaseless  effort  ninety- 
six  cents  a  day. 

In  the  days  of  black  slavery  it  was  to  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  owner  to  see  that  his  human 
property  was  not  overtaxed.  If  he  had  any  re- 
gard for  his  own  interests  he  gave  his  slave 
wholesome  food  and  housing  that  was  weather 
proof.  The  slave  masters  of  the  tenements  to- 
day do  not  concern  themselves  over  any  such  de- 
tails. There  is  no  need  for  them  to  bother 
about  human  conservation.  They  know  that 
there  is  constantly  pouring  into  the  crowded  dis- 
tricts of  the  metropolis  a  fresh  stream  of  human- 
ity, a  gift  from  the  steerage,  to  replace  the  lives 
that  are  being  ground  out,  devitalized,  wasted. 
The  waste  of  human  life  is  the  greatest  of  all 
wastes  in  the  country  to-day.    But  in  the  case 


188    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

of  this  family,  as  in  the  case  of  thousands  of 
others,  the  fact  that  there  was  not  enough  money 
left  after  the  payment  of  rent  to  afford  them  suf- 
ficient nourishment,  that  they  were  in  reality 
fast  being  worked  and  starved  to  death,  was  not 
a  matter  of  interest  to  the  landlord  or  sweat- 
shop owner.  The  one  knew  his  rooms  would 
not  be  vacant  an  hour,  the  other  that  there  were 
thousands  of  other  families  in  just  as  dire 
straits,  who  would  grasp  at  any  pittance  he 
chose  to  offer.  These  are  things  that  should 
concern  the  community,  but  as  long  as  we  per- 
mit the  congestion,  the  exploitation  of  immigra- 
tion and  child  labor  they  will  continue. 

In  the  Southern  cotton  mills  illiterate  ten- 
year-old  children  are  found  working  long  hours 
daily;  in  the  glass  factories  of  some  northern 
States  we  find  children  working  all  night. 
Child  labor  in  the  cities  is  by  no  means  confined 
to  the  so-called  "  licensed "  tenements.  "  Li- 
censed "  means  that  in  these  houses  the  blind- 
ing of  children,  the  stunting  of  them  physically 
and  mentally  by  long  hours  of  ceaseless  toil,  is 
tacitly    legalized.     Certain    industries    may    be 


The  Child  of  Bondage  189 

carried  on  here  in  the  homes.  The  granting  of 
this  authority  to  conduct  these  industries  in  the 
homes  while  not  setting  forth,  in  so  many  words, 
permission  to  employ  children  under  fourteen 
years,  really  opens  the  way;  for  how  is  it  pos- 
sible to  prevent  parents  from  using  their  four- 
or  five-year-old  children  to  pull  out  bastings,  or 
to  sort  flowers,  forced  into  it  as  they  are  by  low 
wages  and  high  rents?  There  was  an  increase 
of  forty  per  cent,  in  the  licensed  tenements  of 
New  York  State  from  1907  to  1910.  About 
ninety-five  per  cent,  of  the  outstanding  licenses 
have  been  granted  to  tenements  in  Greater  New 
York.  The  existing  law  provides  that  a  house 
must  be  licensed  by  the  Labor  Department  if  the 
tenants  desire  to  make,  alter  or  finish  any  of  a 
specified  list  of  forty-one  articles.  But  there 
are  more  than  sixty  articles  not  mentioned  in 
the  law  that  are  now  made  in  the  tenements. 
The  condition  surrounding  the  manufacture  of 
this  latter  class  of  articles  is  so  bad  that  fre- 
quently it  is  discovered  that  they  are  being 
made  in  homes  where  there  is  infectious  disease. 
Although  for  the  manufacture  of  the  goods 


190    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

named  in  the  license  law  the  house  must  have  a 
clean  record  on  the  book  of  the  local  Board  of 
Health,  violations  frequently  occur.  In  one 
home  recently  where  there  was  scarlet  fever  the 
finishing  of  clothing  was  stopped.  An  inspector 
who  called  two  weeks  later,  however,  found  the 
entire  family,  including  two  of  the  children  who 
were  peeling,  engaged  in  sorting  coffee.  The 
sorting  of  coffee  did  not  happen  to  be  one  of  the 
restricted  activities. 

When  the  danger  was  pointed  out  to  the 
mother  she  replied  with  a  shrug  of  her  shoul- 
ders: 

"Coffee?    You  boil   him.    What  the  diff?" 

But  even  with  that  optimistic  view  one  could 
not  but  wonder  through  how  many  hands  that 
infected  coffee  would  pass  before  it  reached  the 
pot. 

Some  facts  presented  in  a  report  just  pub- 
lished by  the  United  States  Bureau  of  Labor 
after  one  of  the  most  thorough  child  labor  in- 
vestigations ever  made  in  any  country  do  not 
make  pleasant  reading,  but  they  demand  the  at- 


The  Child  of  Bondage  191 

tention  of  the  community,  for  they  show  graph- 
ically how  bad  the  conditions  are. 

"  During  this  investigation,"  the  report  says, 
"  it  was  learned  that  sympathetic  doctors  who 
will  agree  to  conceal  diseases  from  the  Health 
Department  are  the  most  popular  with  garment 
workers.  Agents  of  the  Bureau  found  women 
working  on  garments  while  children  in  the  house 
were  suffering  with  contagious  diseases.  They 
would  put  the  garments  down  from  time  to  time 
to  minister  to  or  fondle  such  children. 

"  One  home  finisher  visited  had  a  little  boy 
suffering  from  whooping  cough.  When  he  had 
a  coughing  spell  the  mother  thrust  her  finger 
down  into  his  throat  in  an  effort  to  relieve  him. 
This  caused  slight  nausea  and  the  mother  wiped 
her  fingers,  covered  with  mucus,  on  the  pants 
on  which  she  was  at  work. 

"  In  another  case  where  a  child's  head  and 
face  were  covered  with  a  loathsome  rash,  the 
mother  constantly  stopped  her  work  of  finishing 
pants  and  caressingly  ran  her  hand  over  this 
eruption,  and  then  without  washing  them  took 


192    The  Children  in  the  Shadow- 
up  the  pants  and  continued  her  work.     Asked 
what  was  the  matter  with  her  child  she  Could 
only  say  that  the  doctor  told  her  it  was  some 
'ketcha  disease/ 

"  In  practically  all  the  homes  of  these  work- 
ers spitting  on  the  floor  was  a  conspicuous 
custom. 

"  Many  manufacturers  contend  that  no  mat- 
ter what  the  condition  of  the  homes  may  be 
where  garments  are  handled  —  no  matter  how 
filthy,  diseased,  or  vermin  laden,  that  the  press- 
ing with  a  hot  iron  destroys  all  germs  and  ver- 
min, and  that  the  presser  always  has  a  bottle  of 
cleaning  fluid  to  remove  stains  and  dirt.  But 
no  one  would  knowingly  buy  clothing  that  had 
been  vermin-infected  or  made  in  a  home  where 
one  of  the  family  had  a  contagious  disease,  even 
if  assured  and  convinced  that  the  garments 
were  to  be  pressed  with  a  hot  iron  before  de- 
livery and  cleansed  with  a  cleansing  fluid.  The 
presence  of  the  garment  in  the  shop  before  press- 
ing is  dangerous,  not  only  to  the  presser,  but  to 
all  other  workers  and  to  wearers  of  other  gar- 
ments that  may  then  be  in  process  of  manufac- 


The  Child  of  Bondage  193 

ture  in  the  shop.  The  shop  employes  are  liable 
to  transmit  the  diseases  thus  brought  into  the 
factory  as  they  ride  in  street  cars  or  mingle 
with  crowds  in  streets,  stores,  or  elsewhere. 

"  Not  all  home  finishing  is  done  under  un- 
sanitary or  revolting  conditions,  yet  the  fact  that 
it  can  be  done  under  such  conditions  and 
that  much  of  it  is  so  done,  forces  the  conclusion 
that  such  a  method  of  manufacture  should  be 
abolished  in  the  interest  of  public  health.  A 
single  case  of  typhoid,  traceable  to  polluted 
water  or  infected  milk  is  sufficient  to  arouse  a 
community,  but  the  danger  to  the  public  through 
garments  exposed  to  contagious  or  infectious 
diseases  is  even  greater.  People  can  be  warned 
against  the  polluted  water  or  infected  milk  once 
it  is  discovered,  but  there  is  no  means  of  reach- 
ing those  who  are  exposed  to  the  infected 
garments." 

The  invasion  of  the  home  with  this  work 
means  the  lowering  of  the  standards  of  living, 
neglect  of  household  duties,  insufficient  sleep, 
irregularity  of  meals.  The  one  dominant 
thought  is  to  get  the  job  finished  as  quickly  as 


194    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

possible  and  to  secure  more  work  from  the  fac- 
tory. Two  hundred  Italian  families  were  re- 
cently taken  as  the  subjects  of  an  intensive  study 
of  the  willowing  industry.  One  hundred  of 
these  families,  all  living  under  similar  housing 
conditions,  were  engaged  in  feather  work  at 
home.  The  other  group  of  one  hundred  families 
did  no  home-work.  The  school  records  of  the 
home-working  children  showed  an  average  ab- 
sence of  twenty-nine  days  out  of  an  eighty-nine 
day  school  term,  as  against  an  average  of  ten 
days'  absence  in  the  same  term  for  those  not  do- 
ing home-work.  An  investigation  of  the  men's 
ready-made  clothing  trade  showed  that  fifteen 
per  cent,  of  the  children  in  the  families  investi- 
gated were  unlawfully  out  of  school.  A  similar 
investigation  of  another  group  of  families 
showed  more  than  twenty-one  per  cent,  of  the 
children  illegally  absent  from  school.  There 
are  many  children  under  school  age  too,  who  are 
kept  almost  constantly  at  work.  It  is  not  un- 
common to  find  children  three  or  four  years  of 
age  pulling  bastings  or  sorting  petals  for  arti- 
ficial flowers.     Thousands  of  the  children  whose 


The  Child  of  Bondage  195 

school  attendance  is  forced  by  the  truant  of- 
ficers appear  in  their  class  rooms  day  after  day 
physically  exhausted  by  the  labor  forced  upon 
them  in  their  homes.  If  these  lag  with  their 
lessons  or  are  often  unresponsive  it  is  small 
wonder. 

Much  of  the  work  performed  by  the  children 
is  done  after  the  point  of  fatigue  is  reached. 
Obviously  the  driving  of  these  children  after 
that  point,  either  at  needle  or  lessons,  must  be 
harmful  in  its  effects. 

There  is  frequent  adverse  criticism  of  the  pub- 
lic school  system  of  our  larger  cities.  And  yet 
with  all  the  burdens  placed  upon  it  through  im- 
migration, congestion  and  the  weakening  of  the 
efficiency  of  pupils  through  child  labor,  it  is 
truly  to  be  marveled  at  that  the  teachers  make 
the  progress  they  do  with  their  pupils.  Under 
the  present  system  we  are  expecting  too  much 
from  pupils  and  teachers  alike.  As  we  have  al- 
ready seen,  when  the  truant  officer  becomes  too 
insistent  on  the  child's  attendance  at  school,  and 
the  parents  realize  that  the  child's  contributions 
to  the  income  are  to  be  reduced  through  the 


196    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

compulsory  education  law,  they  are  willing  par- 
ties to  his  commitment  to  a  truant  school  or 
other  public  institution  where  he  will  be  main* 
tained  at  public  expense  until  he  has  reached 
the  age  where  he  can  legally  work  and  help  sup- 
port the  family. 

In  such  legislation  as  exists  regarding  the  reg- 
ulation of  home  industries  the  chief  thought 
seems  to  have  been  the  safeguarding  of  the 
health  of  the  immediate  consumer.  There  has 
been  little  consideration  of  the  more  important 
need,  the  safeguarding  of  the  ultimate  health 
of  the  community.  The  result  of  prevalent 
child  labor,  the  weakening  of  the  municipality's 
vital  resources  through  the  soul  and  body  de- 
stroying burdens  placed  on  the  army  of  child 
toilers  is  even  a  greater  menace  than  the  dis- 
ease germs  that  may  be  communicated  by  goods 
that  have  been  handled  by  sick  workers.  This 
is  a  matter  that  affects  the  future  of  the  entire 
community.  A  law  was  enacted  in  New  York 
in  1882  against  the  manufacture  of  cigars  in 
tenements.  Three  years  later  this  law  was  de- 
clared   unconstitutional   because    the    manufac- 


The  Child  of  Bondage  197 

ture  of  tobacco  was  not  held  to  be  a  menace  to 
public  health.  The  decision  in  this  case  which 
has  stood  in  the  way  of  anything  like  adequate 
legislation  said  in  part: 

"  It  cannot  be  perceived  how  the  cigar-maker 
is  to  be  improved  in  his  health  or  his  morals 
by  forcing  him  from  his  home  with  its  hallowed 
associations  and  beneficent  influences  to  ply  his 
trade  elsewhere." 

But  nothing  was  said  about  the  baneful  ef- 
fects of  home  labor  on  childhood.  The  labor 
problem  of  the  tenements  was  not  in  that  day 
what  it  is  now  with  the  increased  congestion. 
The  decision  is  antiquated,  but  it  still  stands  to- 
day a  barrier  to  anything  like  adequate  legisla- 
tion. And  yet  there  are  some  who  still  point  to 
New  York  child  labor  laws  as  models. 

It  was  shown  by  a  recent  national  conserva- 
tion commission  that  human  beings,  considered 
as  capitalized  working  power,  are  worth  from 
three  to  five  times  more  than  all  our  other  capi- 
tal, and  that  even  at  a  very  moderate  estimate 
the  total  waste  of  our  national  vitality  amounts 
to  one  and  one-half  billions  of  dollars  a  year. 


198    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

The  children  who  should  serve  as  the  nation's 
biggest  asset  for  the  future  are  being  impov- 
erished in  mind  and  body  by  the  slavery  of  their 
infancy.  That  their  normal  growth  is  being 
stopped,  that  their  characters  are  being  mal- 
formed, that  many  of  them  will  become  charges 
on  the  State  if  not  a  menace  to  it,  is  the  result 
of  a  stupid  shortsightedness  as  well  as  a  vicious 
greed.  Some  day  when  we  have  learned  more 
of  the  cost  we  shall  stop  the  shameful  sacrifice 
of  a  coming  generation  by  the  enactment  and  en- 
forcement of  laws  that  will  emancipate  the  child 
slaves  of  to-day  and  permit  them  to  develop  into 
strong,  useful  citizens. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   NURSERY   FOR  LITTLE  THIEVES 

T  N  the  matter  of  the  people,  on  complaint  of  Po- 
lice  Officer  Charles  P.  Lander  against  William 
Thompson,  who  with  two  others  is  charged  with 
picking  pockets  and.  who  pleads  guilty. 

The  Court:  "  I  want  you  to  make  the  state- 
ment that  you  made  to  the  officer." 

The  Defendant:  "  I  give  the  statement  that 
I  was  with  them.  There  is  another  one  in  it. 
He  follows  me  to  school  and  all  over  and  takes 
me  out  with  him.  Now  I  was  in  the  house  read- 
ing a  book  and  he  rings  the  bell  and  he  comes  up 
for  me.  He  is  a  thief.  He  says  to  me,  '  Come 
down,'  and  as  soon  as  he  sees  me  on  the  corner 
he  takes  me  around  to  break  into  two  flat 
houses." 

The  Court:    "Did  you  follow  him  in?  " 

The  Defendant:    "  He  takes  me  in  with  him 

199 


200    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

and  he  tells  me  to  see  if  the  lady  is  in  upstairs, 
and  if  she  ain't  he  comes  up  with  a  big  bunch  of 
keys  and  makes  me  help  carry  all  the  stuff  and 
he  gives  me  a  quarter  and  sends  me  to  the 
theater." 

The  Court:  "How  long  has  this  been  going 
on?" 

The  Defendant:  "  Since  two  months  ago. 
He  rings  the  bell  and  he  comes  up  and  he  sends 
me  out." 

The  Court:    "  How  old  is  he?  "  r 

The  Defendant:  "He  is  about  twenty-four. 
The  other  two  are  twenty-six  and  twenty-three." 

The  Court:    "  Do  they  live  together?  " 

The  Defendant:  "  They  got  a  furnished 
room  over  in  109th  Street.  I  live  in  110th. 
They  get  me  away  from  home;  last  Tuesday 
they  get  me  away,  they  get  me  away  all  the  time. 
They  come  up  to  my  house  and  they  kid  me  and 
tell  me  how  good  I  am  and  knock  it  in  my  head. 
This  other  one  said  he  would  kill  me  if  I  told  on 
him.  He  is  the  one  that  goes  by  the  name  of 
'Kid  Chester/  He's  got  chloroform  in  his 
pocket.     He  told  me  he  would  take  me  over  to 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     201 

Brooklyn  and  chloroform  the  people  over  there 
and  take  their  money  off  them.  He  said  he  got 
the  chloroform  from  a  doctor.'' 

The  Court:  "  The  last  time  you  were  in  this 
court  you  were  put  on  parole ;  that  was  for  pick- 
ing pockets  —  had  they  sent  you  out  then?" 

The  Defendant:    "Yes,  sir." 

The  Court:  "  So  every  time  you  have  stolen 
or  gone  wrong  they  always  took  you  out?" 

The  Defendant:  "Yes,  sir.  I  would  be 
reading  and  they  would  ring  the  bell  and  I 
would  come  down  and  I  could  not  control  my- 
self; they  used  to  get  me  so  that  I  would  go 
down  and  go  crazy  over  it  and  they  would  kid 
me  along  and  I  wouldn't  know  what  to  do.  They 
took  me  up  to  their  houses  and  showed  me  a  lot 
of  things  —  jimmies  —  and  I  slept  there." 

The  Court  (to  the  officer)  :  "  Can  you  find 
this  man  that  he  speaks  of?" 

The  Officer:  "  They  are  of  a  roaming  disposi- 
tion. It  may  take  time  to  do  it;  they  go  from 
one  place  to  another." 

The  Defendant:  "  I  know  where  to  get  him. 
As  soon  as  he  knows  I  am  free  he  will  look  for 


202    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

me.  He  goes  into  stores  and  carries  a  satchel; 
he  meets  me  in  school  and  tells  me  all  about 
burglaries  and  how  to  open  ladies'  bags  and 
brings  me  with  him.  He  will  come  up  to  me 
again  as  soon  as  he  knows  I'm  out." 

These  are  the  minutes  of  an  actual  case  in  the 
Children's  Court  except  that  William  Thomp- 
son is  a  fictitious  name  and  does  not  indicate 
the  boy's  nationality.  The  case  is  typical;  the 
city  lays  William  Thompson  open  to  the  ad- 
vances of  undesirable  playmates,  and  with  a 
boy's  natural  love  of  adventure  is  it  strange  if 
he  follows  down  the  byways  into  crime? 

Great  is  the  cost  to  the  community.  The  ag- 
gregate value  of  money  and  property  stolen  each 
year  by  this  kind  of  boy  thief  amounts  to  a  large 
sum.  Of  all  forms  of  juvenile  delinquency  that 
of  the  pickpocket  is  hardest  to  cure.  Extraor- 
dinary forces  have  gone  into  his  making  and 
he  is  the  one  child  whom  it  is  most  frequently 
beyond  the  power  of  even  the  Children's  Court 
to  help. 

The  pickpocket  is  not  born  but  is  made  after 
months  of  most  painstaking  tutoring  and  test- 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     203 

ing.  Frequently  he  is  the  exemplary  pupil  to 
his  school  teacher  who  is  in  ignorance  of  an- 
other kind  of  training  of  mind  and  hand  that  he 
is  receiving  after  school  hours.  A  quick  mind 
and  nimble  fingers  are  the  first  essentials  for  a 
successful  pickpocket.  Personality  is  impor- 
tant too,  and  if  he  is  led  into  this  business  by 
trainers  older  than  himself  the  lad  who  can 
make  a  plausible,  tearful  plea  if  caught  is  al- 
ways to  be  preferred  to  one  whose  tongue  and 
whose  tear  ducts  work  less  readily  when  neces- 
sity arises. 

The  Children's  Court  and  the  Society  have 
made  what  progress  they  could  in  driving  out 
trainers  like  "  Kid  Chester "  and  cleverer  men 
of  his  sort.  But  it  is  difficult  to  trap  these  fel- 
lows for  they  never  take  actual  part  in  "  larceny 
from  the  person "  but  are  always  across  the 
street  or  at  a  near-by  corner  when  it  occurs. 
And  the  boys  rarely  divulge  the  names  of  the 
men  who  have  initiated  them  into  the  ways  of 
crime  and  thrived  on  their  stealings.  So  deep 
has  been  the  terror  of  their  brutal  trainers  in 
which  these  lads  have  stood  that  I  have  seen 


204    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

them  go  away  to  reformatories  rather  than  be- 
tray their  names.  There  are  stories  of  boys  who 
"  squealed  "  having  their  ears  clipped  and  of  the 
sudden  disappearance  of  others  bold  enough  to 
talk  to  the  authorities.  Yet  when  boys  work  for 
Fagins  they  seldom  get  more  than  a  crumb  of 
the  booty  and  some  have  told  in  court  of  large 
stealings  in  which  their  share  has  been  but  a 
few  cents. 

If  not  taught  to  steal  by  the  older  thieves,  the 
children  frequently  get  their  first  lesson  in 
"  dipping  "  from  other  companions  of  the  dark 
hallways  and  the  streets.  And  when  once  they 
have  become  skilled  in  picking  pockets  the 
money  comes  so  easily  that  it  is  hard  for  them  to 
give  it  up.  The  skill  involved  and  also  the  dan- 
ger give  the  game  a  zest  beside  which  honest  en- 
deavor seems  tame.  The  police  recently  caught  a 
wealthy  rug  importer  picking  pockets.  He  had 
learned  the  art  as  a  boy  and  even  after  he  had 
established  a  big  business  that  rated  high  on  the 
commercial  lists  the  old  desire  for  excitement  and 
a  curiosity  to  know  how  much  of  his  skill  he  re- 
tained got  the  better  of  him  and  led  him  back  to 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     205 

stealing  as  a  recreation.     There  are  many  other 
cases  of  this  kind  on  the  police  records. 

The  ways  in  which  boys  are  led  into  picking 
pockets  are  diverse  and  often  so  insidious  that 
the  youngsters  have  developed  into  clever 
thieves  almost  before  realizing  that  they  have 
done  wrong.  It  not  infrequently  happens  that 
a  lad  who  is  to  be  initiated  into  the  thieves'  fra- 
ternity suddenly  finds  that  an  older  boy  who 
wears  better  clothes  than  he  and  who  has  made 
other  boys  envious  by  a  display  of  spending 
money,  has  taken  a  great  interest  in  him.  It  is 
human  nature  to  be  proud  of  the  attention  of 
those  who  are  apparently  better  off  than  our- 
selves. After  a  visit  to  a  moving  picture  show 
that  has  been  a  revelation  to  the  unconscious 
candidate,  his  new  friend  may  take  him  to  a 
candy  shop  where  he  meets  other  boys,  who  are 
also  better  dressed  than  himself,  and  who  buy 
candy  and  cigarettes  with  amazing  prodigality. 
He,  perhaps,  has  not  had  five  cents  spending 
money  in  his  whole  gray,  little  life.  His  mother 
and  the  children  at  home  may  not  get  much  more 
than  five  cents  for  finishing  a  dozen  pieces  of 


206    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

sweat-shop  work.  Then  his  new  friends  ex- 
plain a  game  to  him  that  seems  to  give  them 
rare  amusement.  One  of  them  drops  a  twenty- 
five  cent  piece  into  his  own  pocket  and  tells  the 
prospective  recruit  that  he  may  have  it  if  he 
can  get  it  without  being  caught.  And  after  he 
has  seen  others  try  and  experienced  the  great 
fun  at  their  detection  he  is  finally  persuaded  to 
get  into  the  game  himself.  The  instructors  are 
conveniently  blind  for  one  or  two  trials  and  the 
prospective  thief  has  won  and  spent  a  half-dol- 
lar; wealth  heretofore  beyond  his  dreams.  So 
step  by  step  he  is  led  along  until  with  his  newly 
acquired  desire  for  easy  money  he  is  helping  the 
other  boys  in  the  gang  perhaps  to  play  "  stool  to 
the  dip,"  that  is  to  crowd  the  unsuspecting 
pedestrian  while  the  more  expert  "  dip "  goes 
into  the  chatelaine  bag  or  pocket. 

The  push  cart  crowds  have  always  offered  a 
fertile  field  for  the  operations  of  this  sort  of 
thief.  The  peddlers  themselves  are  frequently 
victims  when  the  boys  first  set  out  to  steal. 
This  is  particularly  true  of  the  children  who  are 
not  working  for  Fagins  but  on  their  own  ac- 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     207 

count.  They  have  neither  the  boldness  nor  the 
skill  at  the  start  that  has  been  acquired  by  the 
instructed  boys.  Sometimes  a  half-dozen  young 
thieves  work  together.  Two  elbow  their  way 
into  the  crowd  while  the  others  wait  outside. 
When  they  have  agreed  on  a  victim  one  will 
jostle  him  and  while  his  attention  is  thus  dis- 
tracted the  other  opens  the  handbag  or  goes 
through  a  promising  pocket.  Usually  the  theft 
is  not  discovered  until  the  gang  is  far  away. 
But  should  the  luckless  victim  discover  that  he 
is  being  robbed,  the  accomplices  on  the  edge  of 
the  crowd  rush  in  and  the  booty  is  rapidly  passed 
from  one  to  the  other.  Sometimes  the  victim 
attempts  to  hold  the  thief  and  is  set  upon  by  the 
whole  gang.  If  a  policeman  approaches  some- 
one sets  up  the  cry :  "  Cheese  it,  the  cop !  "  and 
the  gang  disappears  to  the  four  quarters  of  the 
wind  in  a  jiffy. 

An  old-time  and  rather  crude  method  was  for 
two  boys  suddenly  to  set  upon  one  another  di- 
rectly in  front  of  a  pedestrian  whose  wealth  of 
watch  chain  or  bulge  of  pocket  had  attracted 
them.     Accomplices    rushed    into    the    pre-ar- 


208    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

ranged  fray,  the  pedestrian  was  upset  and  badly 
pnmmeled  and  after  he  had  gained  his  feet  and 
the  last  of  the  gang  was  flying  around  the  cor- 
ner he  discovered  that  his  watch  or  wallet  was 
gone. 

But  usually  the  larceny  is  effected  without 
any  violence  and  the  victim  is  unable  to  tell  just 
how  it  happened.  In  company  with  a  plain 
clothes  man  whose  specialty  was  boy  pickpock- 
ets I  have  watched  members  of  these  gangs  go 
into  one  pocket  and  bag  after  another  and  take 
an  inventory  of  the  contents  before  finally  at- 
tempting a  "  lift."  This  investigating  of  bags 
and  pockets  is  called  in  pickpocket  parlance, 
"  sounding."  There  are  boys  who  under  cover 
of  a  proffered  newspaper  lift  watches,  others 
who  go  through  pockets  in  the  darkness  of  mov- 
ing picture  shows,  others  who  prey  on  the  crowds 
in  street  cars  and  the  more  important  business 
streets  and  still  others  who  lie  in  wait  for  un- 
suspecting immigrants  at  the  Barge  Office. 

One  young  thief  known  as  "  Benuck " 
brought  much  woe  to  the  East  Side  through  his 
successful  robberies  of  women  by  a  novel  method 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     209 

of  his  own.  With  a  keen-edged  razor  in  his  pos- 
session, Benuck  would  worm  his  way  through 
a  crowd  and  unobserved  slip  under  a  push  cart. 
Here  he  would  wait  until  there  came  within 
reach  a  woman  that  he  thought  might  carry  her 
money  in  her  stocking.  It  is  said  that  he  chose 
the  women  with  thick,  unsensitive  ankles  in 
searching  for  such  depositories,  thereby  reduc- 
ing the  chance  of  getting  caught.  Once  the  hid- 
ing place  of  the  money  was  discovered  he 
brought  his  razor  into  play  with  the  delicacy 
of  a  surgeon,  cut  the  stocking  and  while  the 
owner  haggled  with  the  peddler,  extracted  her 
bank  notes  and  slid  away  to  other  fields.  This 
fellow  long  baffled  the  police,  for  his  whole 
method  was  difficult  to  detect. 

Before  me  at  the  moment  is  a  letter  from  one 
of  the  most  skillful  boy  pickpockets  in  the  coun- 
try whose  stealings  in  his  thirteenth  year,  he 
told  me,  sometimes  amounted  to  more  than 
$1,000  a  month.  His  real  name  will  not  be 
given  here  because  of  the  very  remote  possibility 
that  some  day  he  may  leave  crooked  ways.  Re- 
formatory institutions  will  never  do  it  and  the 


210    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

letter  from  which  I  shall  quote  was  written 
after  able  men  had  labored  hard  and  patiently  to 
break  him  from  stealing.  He  had  been  com- 
mitted twice  and  was  living  in  a  good  home 
about  an  hour's  ride  from  the  city,  in  the  em- 
ploy of  a  man  who  had  been  very  kind  to  him, 
when  he  wrote  this  letter: 

"  I  am  still  doing  well  and  hope  to  keep  it  up 
all  the  time.  I  am  trying  very  hard  to  stop  the 
bad  habits  I  had  in  New  York  and  I  am  going 
to  see  if  I  don't  have  better  luck.  I  am  going  to 
employ  my  mind  better  than  I  ever  did  and  my 
hands  as  well.  I  think  my  hands  are  the  hard- 
est." 

When  the  time  had  come  for  Jacob's  release 
—  let  us  call  him  Jacob  for  convenience  —  the 
Superintendent  of  the  second  institution  to 
which  he  had  been  sent  found  work  for  him  on 
a  Connecticut  farm.  He  wanted  to  keep  the 
boy  far  away  from  his  old  companions  of  the 
East  Side.  But  here  Jacob  became  so  despond- 
ent that  the  farmer  for  whom  he  worked  asked 
the  Superintendent  to  take  him  back  to  the 
Refuge.    Jacob    was    glad    to    return.     It    had 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     211 

been  terribly  lonesome  in  the  country,  he  said, 
"  the  quiet  made  his  ears  hurt." 

"  But  I  kept  straight,"  he  went  on.  "  There 
was  a  picnic  one  Sunday  in  a  grove  near  the 
house  where  I  lived  and  they  let  me  go.  I  guess 
my  boss  wouldn't  have  let  me  if  he'd  known  how 
hard  it  was  for  me  to  keep  my  hands  out  of 
other  people's  pockets.  Those  farmers  and  their 
wives  were  the  easiest  crowd  I  ever  saw.  Not 
much  money,  maybe,  but  it  would  have  been 
great  fun.  I  had  to  shove  my  hands  into  my 
own  pockets  and  hold  'em  so  tight  my  fingers 
ached." 

So  a  place  had  been  found  for  Jacob  that  was 
a  compromise  between  the  lonesomeness  of  an 
isolated  farm  and  the  crowds  of  the  city  and  the 
boy  had  been  sent  to  the  Long  Island  suburb. 
Here  his  nimble  fingers  and  alert  mind  were  kept 
constantly  employed  in  a  succession  of  whole- 
some occupations.  But  the  longing  for  the  city 
was  keen  in  him  and  in  the  same  letter  in  which 
he  told  me  of  his  good  progress  he  said  he  was 
trying  to  persuade  the  Superintendent  of  the  In- 
stitution that  had  released  him  on  a  parole  to 


212    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

let  him  visit  New  York  for  just  one  day.  Jacob's 
father  died  about  this  time  and  he  was  allowed 
to  come  to  the  East  Side  for  the  funeral.  An 
institution  officer  whose  identity  was  known 
only  to  Jacob  and  his  employer  accompanied 
him.  They  had  scarcely  set  foot  on  Manhat- 
tan Island  before  the  news  spread  that  the 
"  thousand-dollar-grafter,"  as  the  boy  was 
known  to  his  old  associates,  was  in  the  city  for 
a  day.  Some  of  the  old  crowd  contrived  to  get 
a  message  to  him.  Jacob  went  back  to  Long  Is- 
land, but  ran  away  within  a  fortnight.  So  far 
as  was  known  he  had  stolen  absolutely  nothing 
while  at  his  new  home.  But  the  old  lure  was 
too  strong  for  him.  After  several  months' 
search,  an  officer  of  the  Refuge  caught  sight  of 
him  through  a  car  window  on  the  subway  plying 
his  old  trade  in  a  crowd  at  the  Fourteenth 
Street  station.  He  captured  Jacob  after  a  hard 
fight  and  he  was  taken  back  to  Randall's  Island. 
Some  weeks  later  while  at  work  with  other  in- 
mates of  the  institution  on  a  pier  he  jumped  into 
the  river  and  was  picked  up  by  a  boat  that  evi- 
dently was  waiting  for  him.     But  he  was  over- 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     213 

taken  after  an  exciting  chase  and  is  still  in  the 
Kefuge. 

This  boy's  training  in  thievery  was  so  thor- 
ough, his  proficiency  so  great,  that  it  is  doubt- 
ful if  the  pickpocket  virus  in  him  ever  will  be 
killed.  The  skill,  the  very  risk  involved,  the 
easy  money,  made  "  larceny  from  the  person " 
like  the  breath  in  his  nostrils.  His  history 
will  serve,  perhaps,  to  show  the  need  of  rooting 
out  the  resorts  where  the  young  pickpockets  get 
their  start  and  of  dealing  drastically  with  all  the 
influences  to  which  so  naturally  they  fell  a  prey. 
For  in  Jacob's  experience  we  have  the  meeting 
of  more  than  one  of  those  hard  conditions  with 
which  we  have  had  to  do,  chapter  by  chapter,  in 
the  story  of  the  Children's  Court. 

His  father  came  here  from  Kussia  to  escape 
persecution.  He  was  a  pious  man  with  strict 
ideas  for  his  children,  but  quite  unable  to  cope 
with  all  the  new,  bewildering  conditions  of  the 
"  free  country."  He  had  rented  a  push  cart  with 
which  there  went  the  privilege  of  naturalization 
papers  along  with  the  peddler's  license,  and  upon 
whose  precarious  business  he  and  his  family  must 


214    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

subsist.  They  lived,  the  four  of  them,  in  one 
room  —  which  meant  that  if  Jacob  and  his  sis- 
ter were  not  always  to  be  under  their  elders'  feet 
they  must  take  the  streets  for  their  playground. 
Across  Seward  Park,  locally  known  as  Tageblatt 
Square,  Jacob  went  to  school  and  here  —  it  was 
their  headquarters  at  the  time  —  the  Fagins  met 
him.  He  was  bright  and  quick  —  notably  so  in 
school  —  a  large-eyed,  good-looking  boy  whose 
patent  qualities  marked  him  out  for  their  pur* 
poses.  They  were  very  kind  to  him,  these  afflu- 
ent, over-dressed  young  men;  they  gave  him 
money  and  showed  him  tricks  and  asked  him  if 
he  couldn't,  uncaught,  slip  a  parcel  out  of  the  old 
lady's  bag  in  front  of  them  —  just  as  a  joke,  she 
was  an  aunt  of  theirs.  They  praised  his  quick- 
ness, his  deft,  light  hand ;  they  became  the  secret 
zest  and  the  reward  in  his  cramped  and  colorless 
life,  and  when  finally  the  rewards  of  the  game 
had  multiplied  beyond  even  the  child's  powers  of 
credence,  what  had  Jacob  at  the  age  of  eight  to 
oppose  to  their  lures?  Jacob's  stern  old  father 
had  all  that  he  could  righteously  do  to  earn  their 
meager  daily  bread  and  shelter  and  nobody  else 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     215 

saw  to  it  that  Jacob  had  anything  to  interest  him. 
The  basement  poolroom,  as  we  have  seen,  no 
longer  has  a  monopoly  of  this  class  of  business 
as  the  nursery  of  little  thieves,  though  there  are 
many  of  them  still  serving  as  primary  academies 
of  crime.  With  the  loosening  of  the  grip  of  the 
Fagins  through  the  efforts  of  the  Court  and  with 
the  boys  taking  the  business  over  into  their  own 
control  the  favorite  meeting  places  now  are  the 
cheap  candy  shops,  the  coffee  saloons  and  the 
moving  picture  shows,  all  of  which  have  been 
springing  up  with  mushroom  rapidity  in  the  past 
few  years.  The  price  commonly  charged  in  the 
pool  rooms  was  two  and  one-half  cents  a  cue; 
now,  with  all  the  rival  attractions,  it  has  dropped 
to  one  cent.  The  cheap  candy  shops  have  spread 
so  rapidly  that  in  some  of  the  congested  districts 
they  now  outnumber  the  saloons.  There  is  no  in- 
tention to  make  it  appear  that  all  cheap  candy 
shops  are  meeting  places  for  young  thieves,  but 
conducted  as  they  are,  on  the  face  of  it  mainly 
for  the  patronage  of  children,  there  is  usually 
little  scruple  as  to  how  that  patronage  is  obtained. 
And  the  atmosphere  often  is  not  much  better  than 


216    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

that  of  the  basement  poolrooms.  Flanked  about 
with  cheap  post  cards  often  dealing  with  un- 
wholesome subjects,  "  nickel  libraries,"  and  poor, 
adulterated  candy,  the  young  thieves  can  easily 
gather  here  to  puff  cigarettes  and  plan  their  next 
adventure. 

This  class  of  cigarette  traffic,  by  the  way,  would 
make  an  interesting  subject  for  government  in- 
vestigation.    The    price    frequently    charged   to 
children  is  one  cent  for  two.    Were  they  made 
of  pure  materials  the  effects  perhaps  would  not 
be  so  vicious.     But  their  manufacturers  have  hit 
on  a  system  of  adulteration  and  treatment  that 
binds  thousands  of  their  boy  patrons  to  them  in 
almost  hopeless  slavery.     This  is  not  the  ranting 
of  an  anti-cigarette  crank  —  any  prejudice  that 
the  writer  might  hold,  would  naturally  tend  in  the 
other  direction.     But  when  an  officer  of  a  big 
tobacco  combination  bewails  the  fact  that  chil- 
dren are  being  injured  mentally  and  physically 
through  the  sale  of  these  adulterated  "  coffin- 
nail  "  cigarettes,  it  is  time  to  think.     This  same 
official  would  have  the  manufacture  of  such  stuff 
prohibited  by  law.     He  states  —  and  for  obvious 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     217 

reasons  I  cannot  give  his  name  here  —  that  in 
some  popular  brands  there  is  not  ten  per  cent,  of 
pure  tobacco.  To  use  his  own  words :  "  The 
other  ninety  per  cent,  is  often  treated  alfalfa  and 
dope."    Another  of  the  permitted  sins  of  greed. 

But  to  return  to  our  pickpockets.  The  police 
and  the  Society  officers  in  raids  on  thieves'  hang- 
outs used  once  to  find  lay  figures  with  chatelaine 
bags  or  with  capacious  pockets  on  which  the  pros- 
pective artists  in  this  business  had  practiced.  A 
bell-hung  coat  was  one  of  the  properties  found, 
in  a  Eidge  Street  resort.  It  took  a  lot  of  prac- 
tice for  a  boy  with  even  the  quickest  and  lightest 
touch  to  get  anything  out  of  a  pocket  that  had 
been  delicately  wired  to  alarm  bells. 

A  lad  in  the  Children's  Court  told  of  similar 
paraphernalia  in  use  in  a  First  Avenue  bird  store 
that  was  really  the  cover  for  a  thieves'  headquar- 
ters. Behind  this  lad  as  he  faced  the  Court 
stood  his  brother,  about  thirty  years  old,  who, 
the  Society  report  showed,  had  been  in  the  House 
of  Refuge  years  before  for  picking  pockets.  Sus- 
picion that  he  had  been  training  the  boy  im- 
mediately fell  upon  him,  but  the  crushed  and 


218    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

heart-sick  appearance  of  the  young  man  as  he 
stepped  forward  startled  even  the  Court,  used 
as  he  was  to  such  things. 

"  I've  tried  so  hard  to  keep  this  kid  straight," 
he  said.  "  I've  tried  to  watch  him  every  minute 
I  was  not  away  at  work,  for  I  know  what  once 
bein'  a  '  dip '  means.  I've  kept  straight  for  the 
past  few  years  —  as  straight  as  I  could.  I've 
been  doing  the  closest  thing  I  could  get  to  hon- 
est work  —  runnin'  a  gambling  house.  But  I 
wanted  this  boy  to  amount  to  something.  He's 
never  known  my  business,  he's  never  known  I've 
been  sent  up.  But  the  crooks  must  have  got  him 
when  I  wasn't  at  home.  When  was  it?  "  he  de- 
manded fiercely. 

But  the  boy  hung  his  head  and  was  silent. 

"  I  used  to  give  him  a  little  spendin'  money 
now  and  then,"  the  man  went  on,  "  so  there 
wouldn't  be  no  need  for  him  to  go  and  steal  it.  I 
guess  he  was  gettin'  a  good  deal  more  on  the 
outside.  He  used  to  come  home  once  in  a  while 
with  a  black  eye  and  a  lot  of  bruises.  When  I 
asked  him  he  always  said  he  had  a  fight  with  a 
bigger  boy  and  got  the  worst  of  it.     It  was  the 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     219 

crooks  beat  him  to  make  him  steal  or  give  up 
the  money  he'd  lifted." 

He  clenched  his  fist  again.  "  I  know  I'll 
never  amount  to  nothin',  but  I  did  look  for 
things  from  that  boy.  And  now,  Judge,  he's 
gone.  This  settles  it;  he'll  never  amount  to 
nothin'  neither ! " 

He  stood  in  utter  dejection,  a  big,  lolling, 
broken  figure.  But  suddenly  he  roused,  he  ham- 
mered the  rail  with  his  sledge  of  a  fist.  "  Oh,  I 
wish  I  could  get  at  'em ! "  he  sobbed.  "  I  wish 
I  could  get  'em !  " 

One  of  the  most  prominent  men  in  the  Bar 
Association  while  visiting  the  Children's  Court 
said  to  a  pickpocket  specialist  from  Central 
Office :  "  I  don't  see  how  it  is  possible  for  a  man  of 
alertness  and  intelligence  to  be  robbed  of  his 
watch  or  jewelry  in  broad  daylight  without  the 
thief  being  detected." 

"  That  is  hard  to  understand,"  replied  the  de- 
tective. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  lawyer  was  amazed  to 
see  his  diamond  scarf  pin  adorning  the  lapel  of 
the  detective's  coat. 


220    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

"  When  did  you  do  it?  "  he  demanded,  stunned. 

"  Immediately  after  you  spoke.  I  have  been 
watching  the  boy  pickpockets  so  long  that  I 
know  a  little  about  their  business.  And  yet,"  the 
detective  added,  "  they  would  regard  me  as  an 
awkward  novice." 

"  Say,  Mister,"  spoke  up  an  under-sized,  thir- 
teen-year-old culprit  that  this  detective  had  just 
brought  in,  "  dat  flatty  "  (the  plain  clothes  man) 
"  was  dead  slow.  If  I  wuz  as  tall  as  he  wuz  I'd 
a  had  it  and  been  lookin'  over  the  crowds  in 
Grand  Street  by  now." 

This  boy  knew  that  he  was  to  be  sent  away 
and  he  was  quite  willing  to  boast  of  his  triumphs. 
All  he  wanted  was  a  listener. 

"  Say,  I've  lifted  ticks  (watches)  right  in  front 
of  de  flatties'  eyes.  De're  too  slow  for  me.  And 
say,  me  and  me  fren's  been  all  over  de  country," 
and  he  raised  his  husky  little  voice  and  straight- 
ened his  narrow  shoulders.  "  It  wuz  great  trav- 
elin\  We  stopped  off  at  Detroit,  Cleveland  and 
Chicago.  Then  we  hit  Los  Angeles  and  lived 
good  for  two  months.  But  say,  Fourteenth 
Street's  good  enough  for  me." 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     221 

But  soon  Moses,  taking  on  the  look  of  an  old 
man,  began  to  moralize.  "  There  ain't  nuttin'  in 
dis  crookin'  business.  I'm  goin'  to  straighten 
out  now  and  when  I  come  out  get  into  some  good 
business.     You  just  watch  me." 

Moses  needed  watching.  He  ran  away  twice 
in  one  year  from  the  reformatory  to  which  he 
had  been  sent.  The  last  time  a  new  officer  from 
the  institution,  one  they  thought  Moses  would 
not  recognize,  went  to  the  old  haunts  of  the  boy 
and  after  watching  for  several  hours  grabbed  a 
youngster  who  looked  much  like  Moses  and  who 
certainly  wore  the  khaki  suit  in  which  he  had 
run  away.  The  officer  was  sure  of  his  quarry 
for  he  had  heard  another  boy  call  to  him :  "  Come 
here,  Moses."  Vigorous  explanations  were  in 
progress  when  the  officer  beheld  the  real  Moses 
across  the  street  with  his  fingers  wiggling  vio- 
lently at  his  nose.  He  didn't  catch  the  right 
Moses,  who  keenly  enjoyed  this  ruse  which  was 
all  of  his  own  devising,  for  several  weeks. 

Moses  is  different  from  the  other  boy  pick- 
pockets, in  having  a  keen  sense  of  humor.  Some 
criminologists  will  tell  you  that  no  delinquent 


222    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

or  criminal  who  is  beyond  hope  of  reform  has  any 
humor.  Moses  has,  but  it  is  very  doubtful  if  even 
he  will  ever  straighten  out.  He  is  now  in  an- 
other reformatory. 

Boys  of  this  sort  undoubtedly  work  great  harm 
in  many  of  the  institutions  to  which  they  are 
committed.  They  are  bound  to  boast  of  their 
criminal  proficiency  and  to  teach  other  boys  to 
steal.  A  most  valuable  feature  of  the  cottage 
system  that  is  gradually  being  adopted  by  the 
reformatory  institutions  is  the  separation  of 
boys  such  as  this  from  others  who  could  not  but 
suffer  from  contact  with  them.  It  would  seem 
that  the  isolation  of  such  boys  should  begin  even 
earlier,  in  the  detention  rooms  where  they  are 
held  pending  a  disposition  of  their  cases  in  the 
Children's  Court.  If  much  progress  is  to  be 
made  in  rooting  out  this  evil  among  children 
the  rules  of  isolation  and  treatment  will  have  to 
be  as  rigid  as  those  observed  in  handling  small- 
pox. 

The  insidious  thing  about  the  pickpocket  germ 
is  that  it  seizes  upon  the  child's  imagination,  his 
natural  impulse  for  adventure.    And  this  brings 


The  Nursery  for  Little  Thieves     223 

us  to  the  point  where  so  many  of  the  offenses 
that  appear  before  the  Children's  Court  have 
brought  us,  to  the  thought  of  preventive  meas- 
ures rather  than  those  that  are  curative.  The 
child  learns  through  his  amusements;  they  are 
as  much  a  part  of  healthy  growth  as  sunshine 
and  they  are  all  great  educational  factors.  So- 
ciety ought  therefore  to  provide  them  as  a  part 
of  its  educational  system.  If  we  do  not  there  is 
always  someone  who  will  take  advantage  of  the 
neglected  opportunity,  someone  who  will  give 
cheap  "  shows  "  and  games,  who  will  teach  a  boy 
cleverly  to  take  things  from  the  pockets  of  his 
"  aunt." 

"  He  gives  me  a  quarter  and  sends  me  to  the 
theater,"  says  William  Thompson  of  the  thief 
who  taught  him  —  why  can't  the  community 
take  a  hint  from  "  Kid  Chester  "  and  send  the 
boy  to  the  theater  itself?  We  have  begun  well 
in  playgrounds,  in  dancing  at  the  public  schools 
—  we  ought  to  go  much  farther.  There  should 
be  many  more  recreation  places  of  the  sort  al- 
ready started.  And  why  should  we  not  add  mov- 
ing pictures  to  our  opportunities  for  molding  the 


224    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

citizens  to  come,  a  good,  clean,  straight,  moving 
picture  place  under  proper  municipal  supervision 
and  not  controlled  by  a  private  combination 
whose  sole  thought  is  profit,  where  the  boy  could 
be  taught  history  and  travel  without  knowing 
it,  where  he  could  get  the  sense  of  adventure  and 
where  there  was  nothing  to  betray  his  ready 
imagination  into  crime  before  he  knew  the  mean- 
ing of  it? 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  MENTAL  MISFITS 

npHERE  is  another  glaring  sin  of  the  eom- 
A  niunity  against  our  neighbor's  child  which 
demands  attention.  This  is  its  failure  to  recog- 
nize and  to  provide  proper  treatment  for  chil- 
dren who  are  mentally  irresponsible  and  who  are 
yet  neither  imbecile  nor  insane.  Many  of  these 
mentally  defective  and  exceptional  children  nat- 
urally come  into  the  Children's  Courts. 

A  lad  with  keel-shaped  head,  wandering  eyes 
set  close  together  and  a  scant  upper  lip  is  ar- 
raigned for  stealing. 

"  He's  been  here  five  times  and  has  been  com- 
mitted twice,"  despairingly  declares  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  Society. 

The  Court  studies  the  forlorn  and  anaemic  fig- 
ure before  him.  Nature  and  the  world  have  com- 
bined against  the  boy.     His  equipment  at  the 

start  has  been  deficient  and  because  of  a  conven- 

225 


226    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

tional  order  of  things  with  which  he  has  con- 
stantly been  in  conflict  he  has  never  had  anything 
like  a  chance  for  proper  adjustment.  The  Super- 
intendent of  the  refuge  where  the  boy  spent  more 
than  eighteen  months  on  his  last  commitment 
declares  that  he  does  not  want  him  returned 
there.  The  refuge  can  do  nothing  with  him,  he 
is  a  total  misfit. 

"  What  am  I  to  do?  "  asks  the  Judge.  To  send 
him  back  is  to  make  him  forever  a  criminal,  to 
release  him  is  to  work  an  injustice  to  society. 

Here  is  a  small  cog  that  will  not  fit  in  the  ma- 
chinery of  any  existing  institution.  If  the  cog 
is  driven  in,  it  is  irreparably  damaged,  and  the 
machinery  is  thrown  out  of  gear. 

But  the  matter  ends  in  this  case  as  it  does  in 
the  cases  of  other  defective  delinquents  —  because 
there  is  no  other  place  to  send  him  the  boy  is  led 
back  rebellious  and  bitter  to  the  very  reforma- 
tory that  struggled  vainly  over  him.  He  will  be 
put  to  the  same  tasks  and  into  the  same  classes 
with  normal  boys.  Whether  set  to  manual  work 
or  study,  tasks  set  him  may  be  commenced,  but 
can  never  be  performed.     There  is  an  excellent 


The  Mental  Misfits  227 

school  system  in  the  institution  but  it  has  been 
discovered  that  after  his  year  and  a  half  there 
this  boy  cannot  spell  the  words  "  cat "  or  "  the." 
To  enable  him  to  make  any  progress  in  the  most 
rudimentary  branches  individual  attention  and 
the  endless  patience  of  specially  trained  teachers 
would  be  required.  Even  in  one  of  the  more 
modern  reformatory  institutions  for  ordinary  de- 
linquents conducted  on  the  cottage  plan  there 
could  be  no  adequate  care  or  treatment.  What 
is  needed  here  is  medical  and  mental  treatment 
by  experts  in  a  special  institution. 

The  mental  deficiencies  of  such  children  lead 
them  irresistibly  to  commit  acts  against  the  law. 
They  are  the  victims  of  environmental  or  con- 
genital causes  which  predispose  them  to  crime. 
In  its  present  method  of  treating  children  of  this 
type  —  or  rather  in  its  neglect  of  them  —  the 
State  is  sowing  a  continuous  crop  for  its  prisons 
and  almshouses. 

One  of  the  chief  causes  of  mental  defectiveness 
is  the  feeble  mindedness  of  parents.  In  this  case 
the  law  of  heredity  cannot  be  gainsaid.  There 
is  no  possible  doubt  that  mental  defectiveness  ia 


228    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

transmitted  from  father  to  son,  from  grand- 
parents to  grandchildren,  and  it  has  been  esti- 
mated that  this  type  of  family  increases  at  twice 
the  rate  of  the  general  population.  Without 
the  careful  examination  of  a  psychiatrist  they 
pass  before  the  Court  as  normal  children.  Per- 
haps they  violate  their  parole  or  come  back  a 
second  and  third  time.  Then  they  are  sent  to 
the  ordinary  reformatory  institution.  It  may 
be  that  the  absence  of  thyroid  glands  in  these 
children  has  brought  about  cretinism,  there  may 
be  a  brain  lesion  due  to  hereditary  syphilis,  the 
trouble  may  have  been  due  to  epilepsy,  or  in 
simpler  cases  the  presence  of  adenoids  may  re- 
tard normal  development  and  render  the  child 
irritable  and  mentally  lazy.  Again  prolonged 
mal-nutrition  may  have  been  the  seat  of  the 
trouble.  But  plainly  for  none  of  these  condi- 
tions is  a  reformatory  the  proper  place. 

So  lax  is  the  present  system  of  examination 
for  mental  and  physical  defectiveness  in  our 
public  schools  that  the  authorities  themselves 
admit  they  have  no  proper  basis  for  conclusions. 
When  one  physician,  aside  from  looking  after 


The  babies  demand  her  attention,  so  she  cannot  go 
to  school 


Their  automobile  is  a  trifle  crowded,  but  they  have  to 
make  the  most  of  their  opportunities 


The  Mental  Misfits  229 

his  regular  practice,  is  supposed  to  examine 
mentally  and  physically  five  thousand  children 
in  a  district,  a  situation  that  is  within  the 
writer's  knowledge,  we  at  once  see  that  there  is 
little  of  the  sifting  process  possible.  There  are 
some  ungraded  classes  but  it  is  only  the  flagrant 
cases  that  get  into  them. 

According  to  the  report  of  a  recent  investiga- 
tion of  42,750  children  in  Boston  schools  less 
than  fifty  per  cent,  were  physically  normal.  It 
is  only  in  the  past  few  years  that  any  study 
has  been  given  to  these  problems,  but  it  would 
seem  that  from  ten  to  thirty  per  cent,  of  the 
adult  criminals  are  mentally  defective  and  that 
their  mental  defects  are  responsible  for  their 
criminality.  The  superintendent  of  the  Bedford 
Keformatory  recently  reported  that  one-third  of 
the  inmates  of  that  institution  were  subnormal ; 
and  from  the  Elmira  Keformatory  it  was  stated 
at  the  same  time,  that  335  of  the  inmates  were 
mentally  defective  while  seventy  per  cent,  were 
physically  defective. 

Had  we  taken  these  defectives  as  children  and 
treated  them  as  their  conditions  required,  there 


230    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

would  be  to-day  a  notable  decrease  in  the  popu- 
lation of  our  almshouses  and  prisons.  Now 
we  do  not  pretend  to  say  here  that  anything  like 
from  ten  to  thirty  per  cent,  of  the  children  who 
get  into  the  juvenile  courts  are  mentally  defect- 
ive. There  are  some  fadists  and  sentimental- 
ists who  would  pounce  on  every  other  child  and 
search  his  person  for  the  stigmata  of  degenera- 
tion. If  the  boy  stole  a  pie,  then  on  some  por- 
tion of  his  head,  they,  by  the  grace  of  their  im- 
aginations, a  pair  of  calipers  and  perhaps  a 
spirit  level,  will  find  a  pie  bump.  Did  he  hit 
another  boy  in  a  stone  fight?  Then  somewhere 
in  his  brain  convolutions  they  will  find  a  kink 
productive  of  cruelty.  They  would  promptly 
jimmy  into  the  head  of  every  boy  who  came  be- 
fore the  court,  tamp  out  the  supposed  twists  in 
his  brain  lobes,  tack  up  the  crevices  and  turn 
him  back  to  his  parents,  a  paragon  of  virtue. 
But  after  a  near  view  of  about  100,000  children 
who  have  been  charged  with  violation  of  the 
law,  I  assert  positively  that  the  vast  majority  of 
them  are  absolutely  normal  from  the  standpoint 
of  their  surroundings.     As  we  have  seen,  the  en- 


The  Mental  Misfits  23 1 

vironment  which  we  permit  for  our  neighbor's 
child  is  intolerably  bad.  This  is  leading  to  the 
great,  growing  crop  of  physically  subnormal 
children.  It  certainly  must  have  some  effect 
mentally  too.  For  poverty  leads  to  alcoholism 
and  the  spread  of  crime  and  disease. 

More  drunkenness  is  caused  by  poverty,  than 
poverty  by  drunkenness.  It  is  the  cruel  grip 
of  poverty  too,  the  awful  monotony  and  drudgery 
at  pittances  that  enable  a  girl  worker  but  half 
to  subsist  that  is  the  chief  augmenting  force 
for  the  army  of  prostitution.  If  we  consider  the 
wretched  wages  too .  often  paid  to  girls  behind 
counters,  to  seamstresses,  to  shopworkers,  it  is 
readily  apparent  that  many  of  them  cannot  be 
expected  to  support  themselves  by  this  means 
alone.  What  hypocrisy  it  is  when  the  employ- 
ers of  such  labor  announce  from  time  to  time 
gifts  to  various  philanthropies!  The  real  serv- 
ice would  be  to  give  living  wages  and  thus  spare 
the  girls  from  bondage.  But  such  "  charity  "  is 
not  so  cheap  and  does  not  command  the  same 
amount  of  publicity.  The  relation  of  all  this  to 
defectiveness  may  seem  remote,  but  it  is  just 


232    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

such  conditions  that  go  far  toward  increasing  the 
number  of  the  feeble  minded.  For  poverty  and 
prostitution  lead  to  the  spread  of  disease  and 
certain  of  these  diseases,  whether  alcoholism  or 
syphilis,  are  important  factors  in  enfeebling 
the  minds  of  coming  generations. 

It  has  been  estimated  that  those  who  are 
called  the  "  high  grade,"  feeble-minded  people 
make  up  perhaps  thirty  per  cent,  of  our  crimi- 
nals, a  large  percentage  of  our  paupers  and 
a  still  larger  percentage  of  our  women  of  ill 
fame.  A  recent  investigation  at  the  training 
school  at  Vineland,  New  Jersey,  an  institution 
for  mentally  defective  children,  those  who  need 
special  care  and  training,  showed  that  one 
feeble-minded  man  was  the  father  of  five  feeble- 
minded children  and  the  grandfather  of  at  least 
nine  feeble-minded  grandchildren,  only  one  of 
whom  was  being  cared  for  in  an  institution 
where  she  could  never  become  a  mother.  Faced 
with  such  statistics,  we  realize  that  the  problem 
of  crime,  poverty  and  defectiveness  can  never  be 
solved  until  it  is  attacked  at  the  source.  This 
institution  at  [Vineland,  by  the  way,  which  is 


The  Mental  Misfits  233 

caring  for  about  400  defectives,  is  supported  by 
private  charity.  The  zeal  of  one  man  for  whom 
the  problem  of  the  feeble-minded  had  a  personal 
interest,  led  to  its  establishment.  It  is  now 
owned  and  controlled  by  an  association  of  about 
200  members.  The  property,  which  is  worth  a 
quarter  of  a  million,  has  all  been  contributed  as 
a  free-will  offering  by  a  few  persons  who  saw 
and  appreciated  the  need  of  such  an  institution. 
There  is  not  another  exactly  like  it  in  the  coun- 
try, but  one  day  when  the  community  has 
awakened  to  the  importance  of  this  problem 
there  will  be  at  least  one  such  institution  in 
each  State  and  these  supported  by  public  in- 
stead of  private  funds. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  the  defectives  who 
come  into  the  Children's  Court  know  that  their 
afflictions  render  them  irresponsible.  For  in- 
stance, a  boy  whose  fiendish  outbreaks  of  temper 
made  it  impossible  for  his  parents  to  manage 
him  was  committed  recently  to  a  protectory. 
On  having  a  task  assigned  him  there  he  balked 
and  fought  with  his  teachers,  declaring :  "  I  did 
not  come  here  to  work,  but  to  get  my  nose  cured. 


234    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

I'd  be  all  right  if  they'd  only  cure  my  nose."  It 
was  then  discovered  that  he  had  growths  in  his 
nose  and  throat  that  created  nervousness  and  a 
mental  condition  that  incapacitated  him  from 
work  or  study. 

Within  three  months  after  his  last  release  a 
boy  who  had  twice  been  in  a  protectory  was 
again  twice  arrested  for  stealing.  His  last  of- 
fense had  been  the  larceny  of  twenty  dollars 
from  his  mother.  Then  he  rallied  a  band  of 
younger  boys  about  him,  bought  pistols,  and 
with  the  help  of  his  companions,  dug  a  cave  far 
from  his  home  in  the  Bronx.  Here  he  and  his 
band  had  their  abode  for  several  days  until  a 
policeman  lassoed  the  disappearing  leg  of  the 
chief  as  he  dived  back  into  his  hole  after  ven- 
turing forth  to  reconnoiter.  It  developed  at 
the  hearing  in  the  Children's  Court  that  the  boy 
leader  had  in  him  a  strange  strain  of  cruelty. 
He  had  taken  particular  delight  in  chopping  off 
a  dog's  tail.  Several  times  he  had  hacked  off 
the  legs  of  live  chickens.  His  appearance  indi- 
cated mental  deficiency  and  the  Court  sent  him 
to  a  psychiatrist  for  examination.     The  report 


The  Mental  Misfits  235 

showed  that  the  boy  was  a  moral  imbecile,  but 
there  was  no  proper  institution  to  which  he 
could  be  sent. 

To  illustrate  further  the  hopelessness  of  send- 
ing defectives  into  the  ordinary  institution  I 
shall  cite  here  the  case  of  a  fifteen-year-old  lad 
arraigned  in  the  Children's  Court  six  times. 
He  had  twice  been  committed  to  reformatories, 
once  for  larceny  and  again  for  robbery  —  or 
rather  that  is  what  his  offenses  would  have 
amounted  to  had  he  not  been  under  the  age  of 
sixteen  and  had  he  been  taken  to  a  court  for 
adults.  The  lad's  sixth  arraignment  was  for 
stabbing  another  boy.  Following  his  last  re- 
lease from  an  institution  he  had  apparently 
been  making  fine  progress  under  the  supervision 
of  his  uncle,  a  lawyer,  who  took  him  into  his  of- 
fice. The  boy  seemed  to  possess  a  very  good 
mind  and  went  frequently  into  Court  for  the 
lawyer  uncle  to  answer  the  call  of  the  calendar; 
but  children  who  lived  near  the  boy  knew  he  had 
been  in  the  House  of  Refuge  and,  in  the  thought- 
less cruelty  of  childhood,  sometimes  taunted 
him.     He  was  on   his  way  home  one  evening 


236    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

when  a  boy  rode  up  on  a  bicycle  and  called  teas- 
ingly : 

"  When  did  you  beat  the  Ref  ?  " 

The  boy  flew  into  an  old-time  rage  and  kicked 
the  bicycle,  upsetting  the  rider.  His  tormentor 
scrambled  to  his  feet  and  struck  him;  the  latter 
then  drew  a  knife  and  repeatedly  stabbed  the 
other. 

When  brought  to  the  Children's  Court  the  boy 
tried  to  dash  his  brains  out  against  a  wall. 

"  I  don't  want  to  go  back  to  the  Island,"  he 
cried,  and  it  required  three  attendants  to  hold 
him. 

It  developed  shortly  after  this  boy  had  been 
committed  the  first  time  that  he  was  a  defect' 
ive.  Without  provocation  he  suddenly  at- 
tacked another  boy  in  the  institution  and  almost 
chewed  off  one  of  his  ears.  He  subsequently  at- 
tempted to  kill  an  officer  while  he  was  in  the 
"  meditation  division  "  where  he  was  to  stand 
in  isolated  confinement  as  a  punishment  for  his 
first  outbreak.  The  superintendent  than  sent 
the  boy  to  the  psychopathic  ward  at  Bellevue 
Hospital  for  observation.     The  resident  alienist 


The  Mental  Misfits  237 

after  a  careful  study  of  the  case  wrote  the  fol- 
lowing report: 

We  are  of  the  opinion  that  this  is  not  a  proper  case 
for  care  in  one  of  our  institutions  (State  insane  asylums) 
within  the  meaning  of  the  statute.  However,  the  boy  shows 
evidences  of  constitutional  mental  defects  due  to  lack  of 
development.  From  your  history  as  well  as  our  examina- 
tion of  the  boy  it  appears  that  he  suffers  from  attacks  prob- 
ably of  the  nature  of  epilepsy.  In  these  attacks  these 
patients  are  not  responsible ;  do  not  know  what  they  are 
doing.  Although  there  is  no  doubt  of  his  lack  of  mental 
stability  and  of  his  defective  development,  he  is  not  a 
proper  case  for  the  care  and  custody  of  a  State  insane 
asylum  within  the  meaning  of  the  statute. 

With  all  these  facts  before  it  there  was  noth- 
ing for  the  Court  to  do  but  to  send  the  boy  back 
for  the  third  time  to  the  reformatory  that  could 
only  make  him  a  confirmed  criminal  and  whose 
discipline  would  be  disturbed  by  his  pres- 
ence. 

The  abnormally  bright  delinquents,  those  with 
astute  minds  but  without  equilibrium,  offer  a 
more  interesting  study.  The  record  of  a  genius, 
even  though  he  be  a  criminal,  is  naturally  more 
interesting  than  that  of  a  low  order  of  defect- 
ives.    The  diverting  of  this  genius  from  crimj- 


238    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

nal  into  useful  ways  might  be,  even  in  a  single 
case,  of  inestimable  value  to  the  State. 

A  frank-faced  youngster  of  fourteen,  with  the 
air  of  a  young  Chesterfield,  was  arraigned  in  the 
Children's  Court  a  few  years  ago,  charged  with 
having  defrauded  a  department  store  of  a  con- 
siderable sum  of  money  by  a  series  of  clever  for- 
geries. His  attractive  face,  polite  speech  and 
quiet  manner,  his  whole  appearance,  his  im- 
maculate turn-down  collar  set  off  by  his  neat 
knickerbockers  and  patent  ties,  marked  him  out 
in  contrast  to  the  motley  throng  of  boys  waiting 
to  go  before  the  judge.  It  seemed  incongruous 
that  such  a  lad  could  be  charged  with  swindling. 
Even  the  detective  who  took  him  into  custody 
was  half  inclined  to  ask  that  the  complaint  be 
dismissed  —  he  feared  he  had  made  a  mistake. 
But  to  the  fatherly,  keen-minded  judge,  who  had 
a  long  talk  with  the  boy,  he  finally  confessed 
forging  the  checks  on  which  the  complaint  was 
based.  This  boy,  who  was  from  the  West,  had, 
when  he  was  eleven  years  of  age,  edited  a  news- 
paper of  which  he  was  the  founder.  His  father 
was  a  poor  printer.     With  no  collateral  other 


The  Mental  Misfits  239 

than  his  unmitigated  nerve  he  had  traveled 
through  the  country  stopping  at  the  best  hotels. 
He  was  living  at  the  Waldorf-Astoria  when  ar- 
rested. He  had  an  interesting  interview  with 
Russell  Sage,  and  I  am  told  that  he  even  in- 
duced the  late  financier  to  invest  in  one  of  his 
Western  schemes.  This  perhaps  speaks  more 
for  the  boy's  persuasive  power,  than  anything  I 
could  say. 

Following  the  announcement  of  the  boy's  ar- 
raignment in  the  Children's  Court  there  came 
a  stream  of  letters  from  men  and  women  who  had 
met  him  in  parlor  cars,  in  hotel  lobbies,  in  restau- 
rants, East  and  West.  One  level-headed  priest 
wrote  that  he  had  spent  the  greater  part  of  a 
day  in  conversation  with  the  lad  on  a  railway 
train.  He  declared  that,  although  he  was  quiet 
in  demeanor,  the  boy  was  chronically  in  a  state 
of  mental  exaltation. 

When  this  young  marvel  was  committed  to  a 
reformatory,  the  officers  of  the  institution  were 
urged  for  the  boy's  own  good  to  keep  him  in  the 
background  and  away  from  visitors.  About 
three  months  later  when  I  was  one  of  hundreds  of 


240    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

guests  at  a  Washington  Birthday  celebration  at 
this  same  institution,  what  was  my  amazement  to 
see,  in  powdered  queue  and  cocked  hafy  the 
center  of  all  attention,  this  very  lad  as  George 
Washington  himself!  The  Court's  commitment 
had  been  indeterminate,  and  in  an  ordinary  case 
the  shortest  time  for  release  would  have  been  a 
year  and  a  half;  he,  however,  in  a  few  months 
more,  talked  himself  out  of  the  institution  and 
into  a  Washington  bank.  His  shrewd  mind 
quickly  grasped  enough  details  of  that  business 
to  enable  him  soon  to  disappear  with  a  consider- 
able sum  of  the  bank's  money.  He  was  ar- 
rested later  in  a  Western  State  and  sent  to  a 
reformatory.  He  declared  later  that  he  would 
never  again  commit  a  criminal  act.  On  his  re- 
lease he  obtained  employment  as  a  traveling 
salesman. 

Between  midnight  and  dawn  one  morning,  in 
a  Kansas  City  hotel,  he  turned  on  both  jets  of 
gas  in  his  room,  and  was  dead  when  discovered. 
Beside  the  body  of  the  boy,  who  was  then  only 
eighteen  years  old,  was  found  this  note: 

"  Worry,  unhappiness,  undeserved  condemna- 


The  Mental  Misfits  241 

tion,  and  hatred  of  doing  wrong  are  the  cause." 
And  so  because  of  our  lack  of  wisdom  in  these 
matters,  the  lack  of  knowledge  and  of  means  for 
expert  treatment  at  the  right  time,  all  the  splen- 
did possibilities  latent  in  the  boy  were  lost  to 
the  community. 

Another  lad  whom  the  writer  watched  for 
months  was  declared  by  a  lunacy  commission  to 
be  irresponsible  and  sent  to  the  prison  for  the 
criminal  insane  at  Matteawan.  He  was  ap- 
parently a  splendid  specimen  of  budding  physi- 
cal manhood,  and  through  his  politeness  of  man- 
ner and  agreeable  personality  was  quick  to  make 
friendly  acquaintances.  But  from  those  for 
whom  he  professed  the  greatest  friendship  he 
did  not  hesitate  to  steal.  His  parents,  unable 
to  keep  him  at  home,  had  sent  him  from  one 
private  school  and  military  academy  to  the 
other.  He  was  dismissed  from  all.  Broken- 
hearted over  his  various  misdeeds,  his  parents 
finally  had  him  committed  to  a  semi-private  in- 
stitution. Twice  he  made  his  escape.  He  had 
quite  as  agreeable  a  personality  as  did  the  crimi- 
nal genius  who  committed  suicide  in  the  Kansas 


242    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

City  Hotel.  After  his  last  larceny  a  commis- 
sion appointed  to  inquire  into  his  mental  con- 
dition found  that  he  had  degenerated  into  a 
moral  imbecile.  One  of  our  greatest  alienists 
has  declared  that,  taken  in  time,  this  boy  could 
have  been  saved.  It  is  a  striking  example  of 
mental  defectiveness. 

There  have  been  exceptional  children,  a  num- 
ber of  them  girls,  who,  because  of  fancied  griev- 
ances, have  attempted  suicide.  One  sensitive 
boy  whose  mental  deficiencies  and  stuttering 
were  related  lately  attempted  suicide  because 
his  teacher  in  a  moment  of  petty  temper, 
mimicked  him  —  an  act  that  should  have  barred 
her  forever  from  the  schools  but  she  is  still 
teaching.  Some  boys  of  the  exceptional  class 
show  morbid  craving  for  sympathy  and  marvel- 
ous genius  for  evolving  out  of  thin  air  stories  of 
mothers  murdered  by  fathers,  of  escapes  from 
atrocious  cruelty  at  home,  of  strange  travels  and 
adventures.  One  of  these  lads  who  had  never 
been  off  Manhattan  Island  told  of  the  slaughter 
of  his  parents  in  South  Africa,  of  wandering 
from  city  to  city,  and  he  told  it  with  such  cun- 


The  Mental  Misfits  243 

ningly  devised  detail  and  plausibility  that  he  kept 
the  Court  wondering  for  a  week. 

There  is  indeed  need  of  a  general  awakening 
to  the  fact  that  a  number  of  mentally  defective 
and  exceptional  children  are  arraigned  in  the 
Children's  Courts  each  year,  and  although  they 
are  not  responsible  for  their  acts  they  are  being 
thrust,  as  we  have  seen,  into  ordinary  reforma- 
tory institutions.  Here  there  is  nothing  for 
them  but  acute  suffering  and  in  the  end  no  re- 
sult but  habitual  criminality  or  pauperism. 
One  exceptional  child  with  criminal  tendencies 
—  and  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  he  may  be  a 
genius  or  near  idiot  —  is  often  a  potentiality  for 
tremendous  evil.  When  the  feeble-minded  pro- 
duce children,  they  are  always  certain  to  become 
dependent,  delinquent,  or  diseased,  and  these  in 
their  turn  produce  offspring  of  a  similar  char- 
acter. To  illustrate:  at  Vineland  there  is  a 
feeble-minded  boy  who  has  as  parents  a  normal 
father  and  a  feeble-minded  mother.  As  a  result 
of  this  marriage  there  are  seven  feeble-minded 
children  living  and  five  others  who  died  in  in- 
fancy.   And  in  following  the  family  back  as  far 


244    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

as  the  grandparents  the  boy  was  the  fourth  child 
of  the  strain  in  the  institution.  The  studies  of 
Vineland  have  shown  that  sixty-five  per  cent,  of 
the  feeble-minded  are  children  of  feeble-minded 
parents.  A  recent  investigation  showed  that 
eight  women  in  an  almshouse  had  given  birth  to 
feeble-minded  children  within  six  weeks  of  one 
another.  The  superintendent  of  the  same  place 
said  that  of  105  children  born  there  within  a 
period  of  five  years  102  were  feeble-minded. 

The  feeble-minded  too  cannot  become  self-sup- 
porting when  subjected  to  present  day  competi- 
tion. They  are  thus  a  drain  upon  private  or 
public  charity  or  upon  family  strength  and  re- 
sources. It  costs  the  State  $161.20  to  support  a 
feeble-minded  person  in  an  institution,  but  the 
cost  of  maintaining  one  at  large  is  incalculably 
greater. 

But  the  plea  that  is  made  here  is  for  those 
mental  defectives  who  are  neither  imbecile  nor 
insane  but  who  have  an  irresistible  predisposi- 
tion to  crime.  There  are  children  whose  mental 
deficiencies  lead  them  irresistibly  to  steal,  to 
commit  assaults,  to  torture  or  burn,  but  who  are 


The  Mental  Misfits  245 

not  morally  responsible  when  they  commit  these 
acts.  The  feeble-minded  are  a  growing  danger 
and  burden  to  society,  and  in  its  gradual  aban- 
donment of  antiquated  method  of  treating  child 
offenders  the  State  must  recognize  that  the  men- 
tally defective  and  exceptional  child  requires  a 
social  process  of  training.  The  State,  in  fact, 
can  ill  afford  to  hesitate  longer  in  providing 
proper  institutions  for  the  segregation  and  spe- 
cial treatment  of  its  mental  defectives,  both  in 
justice  to  the  defectives  themselves  and  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  community,  thus  meeting  a 
growing  danger  and  burden  to  society.  And 
above  all,  the  State  must  see  to  it  that  the 
feeble-minded  are  not  permitted  to  become 
parents. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  BIG   BROTHERS  AND  THE  BIG  SISTERS 

'l^rE  are  hearing  more  to-day  about  the 
™  brotherhood  of  man  than  ever  before. 
That  question  about  my  brother's  keeper  was 
asked  some  thousands  of  years  ago.  We  are 
just  beginning  to  learn  something  of  its  signifi- 
cance. Did  we  fully  realize  that  our  neighbor 
is  our  brother  and  the  responsibility  is  ours,  we 
would  not  permit  many  of  the  things  which  we 
have  seen  happen  to  him.  Our  societies  for 
protection  of  child  life,  our  Children's  Courts, 
our  child  labor  committees,  are  all  tardy,  sur- 
face croppings,  which  indicate  a  great  underly- 
ing belief  in  the  brotherhood  of  man,  would  we 
but  go  to  it. 

Another  small  but  significant  indication  that 
we  are  at  last  setting  some  store  by  the  idea  of 
human  brotherhood,  is  the  way  in  which  the  Big 
Brother  and  Big  Sister  Movements  are  appeal- 

246 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    247 

ing  to  ever  widening  circles  of  men  and  women 
of  good-will.  There  had  been  no  intention  at 
the  outset  to  include  anything  here  about  the 
Big  Brothers  and  the  Big  Sisters,  as  that  was 
regarded  as  all  too  incidental.  The  plan  had 
been  to  deal  with  that  work  in  a  subsequent  book 
on  different  lines.  But  so  rapidly  is  the  Big 
Brother  Movement  spreading,  and  so  firmly 
does  its  appeal  clinch  human  sympathy,  that  it 
seems  the  writer  cannot  avoid  at  least  making 
some  reference  to  it. 

Let  it  be  said  at  the  outset,  that  there  is  no 
reason  why  the  work  of  the  Big  Brothers  and  the 
Big  Sisters  should  be  confined  to  any  one  reli- 
gion or  creed,  any  more  than  it  should  be  con- 
fined to  merely  those  boys  and  girls  who  have 
come  into  conflict  with  the  law.  It  is  open  to 
men  and  women  of  good  will  in  all  creeds  and 
occupations,  to  boys  and  girls  of  all  stations. 
Its  simplicity,  its  humanity,  are  the  elements 
which  make  its  appeal  universal. 

The  spark  of  human  sympathy  that  kindled 
in  the  hearts  of  the  forty  pioneer  Big  Brothers 
as  they  sat  that  night  eight  years  ago  in  the 


248    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

drawing  room  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Wilton  Merle- 
Smith,  in  New  York,  and  heard  the  call  of  their 
little  brothers,  who  were  being  submerged  in  the 
hopeless  environment  which  the  community  tol- 
erated, has  grown  into  a  flame  that  has  touched 
the  hearts  of  men  and  women  to-day  in  more 
than  forty  cities  of  this  country.  The  work 
seems  to  have  sprung  up  almost  spontaneously. 
This  will  immediately  be  apparent  when  it  is 
known  that  up  to  the  time  these  lines  are  writ- 
ten there  has  been  no  national  secretary,  no  na- 
tional organization;  but  merely  the  spread  of 
the  watch-word,  Big  Brother,  Big  Sister,  has 
set  many  men  and  women  in  various  localities 
into  action  for  the  rescue  of  their  less  fortunate 
little  neighbors. 

The  idea  came  into  being  at  a  gathering  of  a 
men's  church  club.  While  this  club  had  been 
formed  for  the  purpose  of  studying  civic  bet- 
terment, it  also  had  a  desire  to  serve.  It  is  as- 
tonishing how  many  thousands,  yes,  and  scores 
of  thousands  there  are  of  such  organizations  that 
really  should  be  great  factors  for  social  service, 
that   are   content   with    merely   studying   and 


One  of  these  boys  is  "Dutch  de  Barrel  Crook."     The 
transformation  of  both  began  when  they  were    sent 
to   the  country. 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    249 

discussing  things.  Perhaps  the  fault  has  been 
in  the  past  that  there  has  not  been  enough  con- 
centration. It  was  Theodore  Parker  who  said 
that  the  church  should  lead  the  civilization  of 
the  age: 

"  It  should  lead  the  way  in  all  moral  enter- 
prises in  every  work  that  aims  directly  at  the 
welfare  of  men.  Its  sacraments  should  be 
great  works  of  reform.  The  one  great  end 
should  be  the  building  of  a  State  where  there  is 
honorable  work  for  every  hand,  bread  for  all 
mouths,  clothing  for  all  backs,  culture  for  all 
minds,  and  love  and  faith  in  every  heart." 

Now  the  men  of  this  particular  club  were  not 
content  with  theory  and  talk.  They  had  the 
energy  and  the  desire  to  do  practical  good.  All 
were  professional  or  business  men  of  experience. 
The  thought  was  brought  home  to  them  that  the 
tenement  child  was  their  neighbor  and  some- 
thing of  the  responsibility  was  theirs.  Someone 
asked :    "  Is  there  anything  we  can  do?  " 

"  Yes,"  was  the  answer.  "  If  each  man  here 
will  take  an  interest  in  just  one  boy,  who  has 
been  the  victim  of  bad  environment,  show  him 


250    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

there  is  someone  who  cares,  and  will  be  a  sort  of 
big  brother  to  him,  that  will  be  real  service." 

These  men  saw  it.  They  realized  then  that  all 
of  us  are  largely  creatures  of  environment  and 
that  there  were  thousands  of  future  citizens  who 
could  be  rescued,  if  someone  would  but  extend  a 
helping  hand. 

A  boy  once  defined  a  friend  as :  "A  feller  wot 
knows  all  about  yer  and  likes  yer  jest  the  same." 

That  was  the  kind  of  friendship  that  was  to 
grow  up  between  these  men  and  boys  and  the 
thousands  of  others  who  later  joined  the 
brotherhood.  The  men  found  before  they  had 
gone  very  far  that  they  had  quite  as  many  defi- 
ciencies as  the  youngsters.  These  men  had  al- 
ways slept  in  good,  comfortable  beds  at  night; 
they  had  enjoyed  three  square  meals  every  day 
of  their  lives  except  when  they  were  suffering 
from  indigestion;  most  of  them  had  read  about 
poverty  in  books  but  few  had  seen  it  face  to 
face.  The  name  of  a  boy  who  could  profit  by  a 
man's  wholesome  friendship  was  sent  to  each  of 
the  original  Big  Brothers.  Their  missions  took 
them  into  unattractive  streets  where  the  chil- 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    251 

dren  played  in  the  gutters,  into  dark  hallways, 
into  ramshackle  houses.  When  they  climbed 
the  black,  creaky  stairs,  a  drunken  voice  some- 
times answered  their  knock  with  a  gruff: 
"  What  yer  want?  " 

It  was  all  a  brand  new  experience  to  them 
and  more  than  one  man  confided  to  me  after- 
wards that  he  went  up  those  tenement  stairs 
with  some  misgivings.  One  was  greeted  at  a 
top  landing  by  a  disheveled,  militant  female  who 
when  he  asked  for  Johnnie  produced  a  rusty 
horse  pistol.  A  belligerent  lady  thought  it 
was  one  of  the  "  hookey  "  officers  until  the  visi- 
tor made  plain  the  pacific  character  of  his  mis- 
sion. Another  was  threatened  with  a  deluge  of 
soapsuds  when  he  inquired  for  Dick,  the  mother 
having  mistaken  him  for  one  of  the  dreaded 
"  Gerries,"  as  the  officers  of  the  Society  are  fre- 
quently called  by  those  parents  whose  delin- 
quencies run  to  drink  and  cruelty.  But  when 
Mrs.  O'Farrell  came  to  understand  that  the  Big 
Brother  had  called  to  invite  Dick  to  join  a 
gymnasium,  her  wrath  thawed  to  the  point 
where  she  invited  him  to  have  a  "  sup  "  of  beer 


252    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

out  of  the  same  can,  a  courtesy  that  was  duly 
appreciated. 

One  of  the  first  visits  was  that  of  Mr.  James 
T.  Britan,  the  assistant  pastor  of  Dr.  Merle- 
Smith's  church.  When  he  went  into  a  dark  cel- 
lar in  the  Hell's  Kitchen  district,  he  found  the 
boy  who  only  a  few  days  before  had  been  in  the 
Children's  Court,  trembling  with  fright  beside  his 
mother  who  was  thought  to  be  dying  in  the 
clutches  of  the  "  white  death."  The  boy  had 
been  arrested  for  playing  truant,  and  had  been 
released  on  probation  on  the  promise  that  he 
would  go  to  school  every  day.  When  he  saw  the 
minister's  legs  coming  down  those  steps,  he 
thought  it  was  the  truant  officer  and  he  feared 
he  would  be  dragged  away  to  the  truant  school. 
The  father  was  dead.  The  older  brother  was 
out  seeking  work.  They  were  out  of  food,  fuel, 
medicine,  everything  they  needed.  While  the 
boy  had  been  there  nursing  the  dying  mother, 
he  technically  had  been  a  violation  of  the  law. 

The  men  had  been  warned  against  useless 
money  charity,  about  the  parasites  that  would 
probably  prey  on  them  were  it  discovered  that 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    253 

they  did  not  know  when  and  where  to  give. 
But  here  was  a  case  that  demanded  money  relief 
at  once.  As  a  result  of  that  visit,  the  tuber- 
cular mother  and  her  small  family  were  moved 
into  three  bright,  clean  rooms.  Work  was  ob- 
tained for  the  older  brother.  The  smaller  boy 
was  placed  back  in  school.  The  mother  is  alive 
to-day  and  the  "  little  brother  "  of  that  day  has 
developed  into  a  splendid,  manly  fellow,  with 
considerable  artistic  ability,  and  occupies  an 
important  place  in  the  designing  department  of 
one  of  the  big  stores. 

The  assignment  of  another  Big  Brother  took 
him  over  into  an  East  Seventy-fifth  Street  tene- 
ment late  one  night.  It  was  long  past  the  time 
when  all  of  the  children  should  have  been  in 
bed,  but  five  of  the  ten  he  found  standing  about 
the  outside  of  the  little  store  the  family  rented 
on  the  ground  floor.  When  the  children  were 
asked  why  they  were  not  asleep,  they  replied 
that  they  "  had  to  make  room  "  for  the  others. 
It  was  "  their  turn  in  bed  "  now.  In  fact,  there 
was  not  sufficient  room  in  the  two  little  cubby 
holes  this  family  used  as  a  home  and  place  of 


254    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

business  for  the  entire  brood  to  occupy  it  at  one 
time.  This  family  was  helped  to  get  into  larger, 
brighter,  airier  quarters,  too,  with  good  results. 

Then  there  was  a  youngster  who  had  made  a 
tearful  plea  in  court  for  the  release  of  his  lit- 
tle sister  who  had  stolen  potatoes  from  a  ped- 
dler's wagon  for  his  breakfast  so  that  he  could 
go  to  work.  The  mother  had  died  several  years 
before.  The  father  had  succumbed  only  re- 
cently to  consumption,  but  in  his  last  breath  he 
had  begged  the  boy  "  to  be  good  to  his  little 
sister."  The  two  had  been  living  for  some 
weeks  together  in  miserable  rooms  for  which 
they  paid  $8.00  a  month,  while  their  combined 
earnings  were  $4.50  a  week.  The  little  girl  was 
not  committed  as  a  thief  but  because  of  mal-nu- 
trition  and  neglect.  She  was  sent  to  an  institu- 
tion in  the  country,  where  she  could  get  some 
of  the  fresh  air  and  wholesome  food  that  she 
needed  to  bring  back  the  flesh  and  color  to  her 
parchment  covered  face. 

"  Oh,  Judge,"  the  boy  had  pleaded,  the  tears 
streaking  his  grimy  face,  "  she  ain't  a  bad  girl ; 
she  won't  steal  again.     Please  let  her  go  and 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    255 

I'll  take  good  care  of  her."  It  happened  it  was 
the  Judge  himself  who  went  to  that  home  and 
who  became  the  Big  Brother.  It  was  Judge 
Franklin  C.  Hoyt,  one  of  the  Children's  Court 
Judges  of  New  York,  and  who  hears  twice  as 
many  children's  cases  in  one  year  as  any  other 
Children's  Court  Judge  in  the  world.  But  he 
realized  the  value  of  the  personal  element  in 
such  work.  Yes,  and  so  keen  was  his  interest  in 
it  that  it  was  not  long  before  he  was  one  of  the 
leaders  of  the  Big  Brothers. 

Wholesome  food  was  obtained  for  the  lad. 
Decent  clothes  were  put  on  his  back  and  within 
forty-eight  hours  he  was  working  at  a  job 
where  he  received  twice  as  much  pay  as  the  com- 
bined earnings  of  the  two  had  been  before.  It 
was  not  long  before  that  boy  had  a  little  bank 
account  which  he  cherished  and  hoarded  toward 
the  day  when  he  was  able  to  bring  his  little  sis- 
ter back  to  a  neat  home.  And  what  a  happy 
day  that  was! 

The  call  of  another  Big  Brother  took  him  into 
a  three-room  tenement  in  West  53rd  Street  the 
day  before  Christmas.     It  had  been  an  act  of 


256    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

boyish  mischief  that  got  Edward  into  court,  and 
as  it  turned  out,  his  delmt  there  was  probably 
the  luckiest  happening  of  his  life.  His  father 
was  dead  and  the  family  was  frightfully  poor. 
As  the  Big  Brother  afterwards  described  the 
visit : 

"  The  mother,  a  stout,  respectable  Swedish 
woman,  was  deep  in  the  mysteries  of  preparing 
a  pie,  the  first,  she  confessed  to  me,  they  had 
had  in  a  year.  The  kitchen  was  full  of  neigh- 
bors and  neighbors'  children,  but  she  greeted 
me  with  a  hearty  smile  and  a  warm,  damp 
handshake.  Yes,  Eddie  was  a  good  boy  — 
most  boys  are  paragons  to  their  mothers  if 
they  amount  to  anything  —  couldn't  I  get  him  a 
'yob?'  I  told  her  I  would  try  but  I  wanted 
to  get  him  a  pair  of  shoes  first,  for  I  noticed 
that  Eddie  wore  a  pair  of  men's  shoes  many 
sizes  too  large  for  him,  one  of  them  split  en- 
tirely across  the  toe  and  both  worn  through  un- 
til his  feet  were  practically  on  the  ground.  The 
mother's  gratitude  was  loud  and  voluble  and 
when  I  left  she  gave  me  a  hearty  pat  on  the  back 
that  left  a  large  imprint  of  a  flour-covered  palm, 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    257 

and  wished  me  all  kinds  of  luck  and  a  Merry 
Christmas.  She  said  Edward  would  meet  me 
that  afternoon. 

"  It  was  quite  cold  when  Edward  reported  at 
my  office.  He  was  without  an  overcoat,  but 
wore  a  thin,  light,  summer  suit,  no  vest,  a  torn 
calico  shirt  without  collar,  and  then  those  awful 
shoes.  He  was  indeed  a  picture  of  misery  and 
wras  conscious  of  his  wretched,  ludicrous  appear- 
ance. As  I  put  on  my  warm  overcoat  to  go  with 
him,  I  felt  guilty  and  ashamed  that  I  should  be 
so  warmly  clad  when  this  poor  little  soul  needed 
so  much.  We  first  stopped  to  buy  some  socks, 
for  the  boy  had  told  me  shamefacedly  that  his 
socks  were  so  full  of  holes,  he  would  not  like  to 
take  his  shoes  off  to  have  the  new  ones  tried  on. 

" '  But  say,'  he  suddenly  suggested,  seeking  a 
way  out  of  the  dilemma, '  just  get  a  pair  of  shoes 
about  half  as  long  as  these  I  have  got  on  and 
they'll  be  all  right.  They  won't  have  to  see  the 
socks.' 

"  But  no,  I  said,  we  would  have  the  socks,  and 
we  bought  them.  At  the  elevated  station  on  the 
way  to  the  shoe  store,  Edward  again  showed  his 


258    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

resourcefulness,  for  lie  disappeared  into  the 
waiting  room  and  when  he  emerged,  he  wore  a 
wide  smile  and  said,  '  I've  got  them  on  all  right.' 
At  the  shoe  store,  the  boy  was  quickly  fitted  and 
when  the  salesman  asked  me  whether  we  wished 
to  take  the  old  ones  home  with  us,  I  thought  he 
meant  to  be  sarcastic  and  so  with  a  benevolent 
air,  I  replied,  '  No,  you  may  keep  them.'  Ed- 
ward had  many  a  collision  as  we  walked  up  Sixth 
Avenue,  for  he  could  not  keep  his  eyes  straight. 
He  was  constantly  watching  those  shoes. 

"  I  did  not  have  very  much  money  myself  but 
another  Big  Brother  had  given  me  $5.00  to  help 
out  and  I  bethought  myself  of  a  pawn  shop  over 
on  Tenth  Avenue,  where  they  had  unredeemed 
pledges.  Soon  Edward  was  fitted  with  a  coat 
and  vest  as  good  as  new  which  originally  must 
have  cost  about  $8.00,  but  I  bargained  with  the 
man  until  I  got  it  down  to  $3.00.  As  I  paid  for 
them,  Edward  heaved  a  sigh  of  relief.  I  had 
noticed  that  he  was  getting  nervous  during  the 
bargaining,  fearing  the  pawn-broker  and  myself 
would  not  come  to  terms.  It  was  more  difficult 
to  find  trousers  for  him,  for  his  waist  was  so 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    259 

slim  and  he  had  legs  like  a  young  colt,  but  we 
finally  got  a  pair  for  a  dollar.  As  we  again 
walked  up  the  avenue,  Edward  slipped  his  hand 
into  mine,  and  glanced  up  at  me  with  sparkling 
eyes;  '  Gee,  I'm  a  regular  dude  now/ 

"  When  the  boy  called  on  me  the  next  day,  he 
fairly  danced  about  the  room.  It  surely  was 
the  happiest  Christmas  morning  he  had  ever 
known.  He  was  transformed  from  a  little 
shivering  starveling  into  a  bright,  happy  boy,  a 
real  boy  conscious  of  his  altered  appearance. 
The  following  Monday  I  was  able  to  find  work 
for  Edward,  for  he  now  made  a  good  appear- 
ance in  his  new  outfit.  All  this  for  $0.75. 
When  Edward  made  good  on  his  job  and  turned 
his  money  over  to  his  mother  each  week,  I  cer- 
tainly concluded  it  had  been  a  good  investment. 
And  I  still  think  so  when  I  look  at  him  to-day." 

These  were  merely  the  starting  incidents. 
Chapters  might  be  written  about  the  visits  into 
the  other  tenements.  There  were  some  discour- 
agements, of  course,  but  most  of  the  men  real- 
ized from  the  start  that  they  have  undertaken 
a  man's  job  and  came  to  take  a  keen  personal 


260  The  Children  in  the  Shadow- 
pleasure  in  the  progress  they  made  with  their 
cases.  It  had  been  agreed  at  the  start  that  there 
was  to  be  nothing  of  preaching  or  lecturing, 
and  above  all  no  patronizing.  It  was  to  be  sug- 
gestion rather  than  platitude.  Then,  too,  the 
mention  of  Children's  Court  was  tabooed.  The 
men  apparently  did  not  know  there  was  such 
a  place. 

Some  months  after  most  of  the  men  had  suc- 
ceeded in  establishing  relations  of  confidence 
with  their  Little  Brothers,  they  decided  to  ex- 
periment in  bringing  their  boys  together  for  a 
little  dinner.  It  was  indeed  a  notable  affair. 
There  was  Mickey,  and  beside  him  his  friend,  a 
well-known  banker;  Spike,  who  sat  next  to  his 
host,  a  famous  architect;  Chink,  who  graciously 
accepted  his  Big  Brother,  although  he  did  wear 
the  cloth,  and  other  just  as  interesting  person- 
ages. The  attempts  that  the  boys  had  made  to 
appear  good  in  the  eyes  of  their  Big  Brothers 
were  interesting  indeed.  For  instance,  there 
was  a  little  fellow  who  could  not  afford  the  lux- 
ury of  a  clean  shirt,  but  whose  mother  at  the  last 
moment  had  hastily  washed  and  ironed  a  hand- 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    261 

kerchief  and  pinned  it  across  the  place  where 
the  shirt  ought  to  be.  Countenances  had  been 
scoured  until  they  shown. 

One  youngster  came  fairly  redolent  in  the 
luxury  of  cheap  perfume.  Noting  my  look  of 
surprise  when  I  caught  the  odor,  he  tugged  my 
coat-sleeve  and  motioned  me  to  a  corner.  When 
we  were  safely  out  of  the  hearing  of  the  crowd, 
he  eagerly  asked: 

"Ain't  it  great;  I  got  it  at  de  corner  drug 
store  fer  a  nickel !  " 

It  was  great  I  assure  you. 

These  were  all  mighty  good  signs.  It  showed 
that  at  least  the  first  important  step  had  been 
taken  toward  the  making  of  good  citizens ;  these 
lads  were  developing  self-respect.  The  boys  had 
been  told  that  they  would  be  expected  to  respond 
to  a  toast  and  had  selected  a  spokesman.  He 
had  carefully  written  out  a  speech  and  tucked  it 
under  his  cup,  whence  I  rescued  it  later  and  I 
shall  give  part  of  it  verbatim  : 

Gentlemen  and  Friends: — We  cannot  retaliate  your 
favors  at  present  by  inviting  you  to  dinners,  but  we  can  by 


262    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

becoming  men  of  whom  you  can  look  in  the  future  and 
say  with  pride:  'He  used  to  be  one  of  the  boys  of  our 
club.'  As  you  know,  I  am  not  much  of  a  speaker  which 
I  do  not  pretend  to  be.  I  close  with  three  cheers,  one  for 
the  men's  club,  one  for  the  boys'  club  and  one  for  our 
country. 


That  boy  afterwards  occupied  a  position  of 
trust  in  a  big  bank,  and  to-day  his  Big  Brother 
has  him  in  a  most  important  post  in  his  employ. 

A  work  as  productive  as  this  was  bound  to 
grow.  It  not  only  developed  the  boys,  but  it 
broadened  the  men  into  better,  bigger  citizens. 
Men  in  other  church  clubs,  in  alumni,  business 
and  social  organizations  were  anxious  to  have  a 
part  in  it. 

The  work  has  never  been  cumbered  with 
red  tape,  but  it  was  necessary  finally  to  have  a 
Board  of  Directors.  When  a  man  was  accepted 
as  a  Big  Brother  he  was  asked  to  pledge  his  word 
that  he  would  show  the  boy  who  was  sent  to  him 
that  there  really  was  someone  who  cared  and 
who  was  anxious  to  help  him  over  the  rough 
places.  So  far  as  possible,  an  effort  was  always 
made  to  find  a  boy  who  lived  in  a  neighborhood 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    263 

not  too  remote  from  the  man,  so  it  would  not  be 
too  difficult  for  them  to  visit  back  and  forth.  A 
general  secretary  was  employed  and  to  him  each 
man  was  requested  to  report,  at  stated  intervals, 
regarding  the  progress  of  his  case.  Of  course, 
every  boy  did  not  develop  into  a  paragon  of  vir- 
tue. At  best  they  were  boys,  not  angels.  But 
it  was  found  at  the  end  of  the  first  year  that 
only  three  per  cent,  of  the  lads  who  had  Big 
Brothers,  again  got  back  into  the  Children's 
Court.  The  freedom  from  red  tape,  from  set 
rules,  from  big  salary  budgets  and  staffs  of  paid 
philanthropists,  all  had  much  to  do  with  develop- 
ing this  work  to  the  great  proportions  it  has  as- 
sumed to-day.  It  was  necessary,  of  course,  to 
use  discretion  in  selecting  the  individual  man 
for  the  individual  boy.  In  time  it  was  decided 
that  before  a  man  could  finally  be  accepted  as  a 
Big  Brother  he  should  not  only  pass  other  pre- 
liminary requirements,  but  should  prove  that 
after  three  months'  experience  he  was  making 
satisfactory  progress  with  his  boy.  Promiscuous 
charity  giving  has  ever  been  discouraged,  and 
the   rule    has   been    for   the    Big   Brother   not 


264    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

to  give  financial  aid  to  a  boy,  except  for  value 
received.  For  instance,  when  money  was  given 
to  a  lad  for  a  new  suit  of  clothes,  frequently  he 
was  told  that  he  would  be  expected  to  repay  this 
by  working  after  school  or  in  vacation  time.  So 
this  lad's  pride  finally  was  not  only  in  a  new 
suit,  but  in  the  fact  that  he  had  been  able  to  earn 
it  through  his  own,  honest  work. 

Wherever  it  has  been  possible,  existing  institu- 
tions have  been  used  to  help  in  the  Big  Brother 
work.  It  has  not  been  necessary  for  the  Big 
Brothers  to  build  big  plants  and  put  fortunes 
into  shells  of  brick  and  mortar.  The  feeling 
has  been  that  the  existing  agencies  should  be 
more  fully  utilized.  And  so  permission  has  been 
obtained  to  use  church  and  other  gymnasiums 
which  otherwise  would  more  often  than  not  have 
remained  dark  at  night.  This  same  plan  has 
been  followed,  too,  in  utilizing  boys'  camps  in  the 
summer,  to  which  those  Little  Brothers  who  were 
in  greatest  need  of  good  air,  food  and  play  space, 
could  be  sent  to  banish  some  of  the  anaemia  from 
their  stunted  bodies.  How  successful  this  has 
been  is  attested  by  the  fact  that  the  average  gain 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    265 

per  boy  in  one  camp  last  summer,  was  six 
pounds. 

To  one  of  these  camps  "  Dutch  De  Bar- 
rel Crook  "  was  sent  with  quite  a  company  of 
other  Little  Brothers  last  summer.  Now,  Dutch 
perhaps  did  not  need  to  get  away  from  the  city 
streets  for  physical  reasons,  but  he  was  about 
ripe  for  a  reformatory,  and  his  Big  Brother  real- 
ized that  he  was  in  critical  need  of  a  change 
from  the  pavements.  Dutch  got  his  name  from, 
the  wonderful  facility  with  which  he  could  send 
an  empty  barrel  spinning  across  a  sidewalk  from 
in  front  of  a  fruit  or  vegetable  stand.  With  one 
dexterous  twist  of  the  wrist  he  would  send  a  bar- 
rel whirling  on  edge  out  into  the  street,  when  two 
of  his  companions  would  come  flying  along,  grab 
it  up  and  disappear  around  the  corner  with  it 
before  the  stand  owner  realized  what  had  hap- 
pened. These  boys  had  barrels  stacked  high  in  a 
vacant  lot  and  were  conducting  a  profitable  busi- 
ness when  they  were  caught.  It  was  by  the  nar- 
rowest chance  that  Dutch  escaped  going  to  an  in- 
stitution and  was  given  a  chance  on  probation. 

It  was  here  that  the  Big  Brother  entered. 


266    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

Dutch  had  been  quite  a  bruiser.  In  fact,  in  his 
unregenerate  days  he  would  rather  fight  than 
eat.  His  head  and  face  bore  many  scars  of  past 
battles. 

The  wonders  of  nature  were  all  new  to  Dutch 
when  he  got  into  the  country.  He  was  one  of 
the  boys  who  had  never  before  been  off  Manhat- 
tan Island.  Dutch's  Big  Brother  took  two 
weeks  of  his  vacation  to  accompany  him  to  camp. 
The  boy  came  to  him  one  day  and  exhibited  a 
trifling  cut  in  his  knee  which  to  Dutch  would 
have  amounted  ordinarily  to  less  than  a  pin 
scratch : 

"  I  got  a  bad  cut,  Mr.  Brown,"  said  Dutch. 
Mr.  Brown  scarcely  looked  at  it,  not  realizing  the 
psychological  significance  of  the  plea. 

"Why,  just  sit  down  there,"  said  the  Big 
Brother,  "and  take  a  feather  and  tickle  that 
scratch  long  enough  and  it  will  heal  right  up." 

And  Mr.  Brown  went  hurrying  off  with  a 
crowd  of  boys  for  a  tramp  across  the  fields. 
What  was  his  astonishment  when  he  returned 
to  see  Dutch,  the  bruiser,  sitting  under  a  tree  pa- 
tiently, but  industriously,  tickling  his  scratched 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    267 

knee  with  a  feather.  The  boy  had  thus  been 
engaged  for  an  hour.  He  saw  the  look  of  amused 
wonder  on  the  face  of  the  Big  Brother.  He  flew 
into  a  rage : "  You  ain't  been  on  the  level  wid  me," 
he  exclaimed,  "  I  t'ot  you  was  on  the  square. 
It's  all  off  between  me  and  you  and  I'm  goin' 
home." 

It  was  a  long  time  before  that  Big  Brother 
succeeded  in  straightening  things  out  with 
Dutch.  It  was  the  first  time  he  had  realized  that 
the  "  barrel  crook  "  had  taken  his  every  word 
as  golden  truth.  The  Big  Brother  had  to  make 
profuse  apologies,  and  even  then  it  was  several 
days  before  the  two  got  back  to  their  old  status. 

Dutch  is  doing  splendidly  to-day.  He  has  a 
good  job,  is  going  to  night  school,  and  recently 
he  has  taken  to  studying  Shakespeare.  He  came 
into  my  office  not  long  ago  with  an  essay  on 
Hamlet.  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  a  Shakespearean 
scholar,  but  I  do  say  that  that  essay  would  make 
most  Shakespearean  scholars  sit  up  and  take  no- 
tice. I  learned  things  about  Hamlet  that  I  had 
never  known  before. 

One  big  hearted  Big  Brother  who  has  never 


268    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

revealed  his  name  to  the  public  recently  gave  a 
farm  to  the  Movement.  It  is  a  fertile  and  pic- 
turesque tract  of  230  acres  on  the  slopes  of  the 
Delaware  Kiver  at  Stockton,  N.  J.  Here  some 
of  the  boys  who  have  no  homes  and  have  been 
mothered  only  by  the  streets  are  sent.  The 
change  that  comes  over  them  is  almost  miracu- 
lous. The  first  group  were  stunted  in  mind  and 
body  when  sent  to  the  country  but  in  the  whole- 
some surroundings  they  are  developing  into 
splendid  young  men.  The  neighbors  had  viewed 
the  "  street  gamins  "  with  dread  when  they  first 
appeared  in  Stockton.  To-day  those  boys  are 
the  pride  of  the  community.  Nearly  all  are  des- 
tined to  become  successful  farmers,  artisans  or 
business  men. 

In  all  this  work  of  the  Big  Brothers,  personal 
relationship  has  been  the  king-pin.  Its  whole 
success  has  been  due  to  the  personal  equation 
as  expressed  between  the  man  and  the  boy.  How 
successful  this  has  been  is  attested  by  the  fact 
that  the  original  Big  Brother  organization  of 
New  York  County  last  year  looked  after  2,883 
boys,  with  the  result  that  less  than  three  per  cent. 


Big  Brothers  and  Big  Sisters    269 

of  them  again  got  back  into  the  Children's  Court. 
There  are  other  Big  Brother  organizations;  in 
New  York  the  Jewish  Big  Brothers  and  the 
Brooklyn  Juvenile  Probation  Association  that 
are  doing  just  as  effective  work.  As  was  indi- 
cated at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter,  this  move- 
ment has  spread,  until  it  is  now  being  followed 
in  one  way  or  another  in  more  than  forty  cities 
in  this  country. 

But  someone  will  say,  what  about  the  girls? 
Well,  the  girls  are  being  looked  after  too,  for 
within  the  past  two  years  a  similar  work  which  is 
known  as  the  Big  Sisters  has  been  established 
through  the  personal  efforts  and  untiring  de- 
votion of  Mrs.  William  K.  Vanderbilt.  The 
women  who  are  engaged  in  this  work  are  giving 
the  same  sort  of  personal  attention  and  help  to 
the  girls  that  have  been  extended  to  the  boys,  and 
with  results  that  have  been  equally  good.  For 
that  old  notion  that  you  cannot  do  anything  for 
a  girl  who  has  made  a  misstep,  is  being  found 
to  be  narrow,  selfish  and  unjustified.  It  has  been 
ignorance  and  prejudice  chiefly  that  have  caused 
men  and  women  to  look  askance  at  the  child,  and 


270    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

especially  the  girl,  who  has  been  in  trouble.  We 
are  learning  day  by  day  that  the  chief  trouble 
has  not  been  with  the  child,  but  with  ourselves. 

The  chief  tenet  in  the  faith  of  the  Big  Broth- 
ers and  the  Big  Sisters,  is  that  the  condition  of 
the  tenement  child  is  not  of  his  own  making. 
Whether  he  is  to  become  a  friend  and  helper, 
or  an  enemy  of  the  State,  rests  largely  with  his 
neighbor.  He  is  in  a  formative  state  and  easily 
molded. 

If  you  believe  that  a  child  in  the  open  is  bet- 
ter than  a  child  in  jail  you  are  in  sympathy  with 
the  movement.  If  you  believe  that  a  child  un- 
aided cannot  always  overcome  the  tendency  of 
unfortunate  environment  or  be  happy  and  of  use 
without  any  of  the  things  which  make  for  happi- 
ness and  usefulness,  you  concur  in  the  platform. 
If  you  are  willing  to  do  something  yourself  to 
help  a  child  who  needs  it,  and  take  some  of  life's 
handicap  off  his  underfed  body  and  undeveloped 
mind,  you  are  doing  a  service  worth  while. 

The  profits  of  such  a  work  run  big  to  the  chil- 
dren, to  the  men  and  women  who  engage  in  it, 
and  to  the  future  citizenship  of  the  country. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  AWAKENING 

TN  the  rich  and  jeweled  gloom  of  St.  Mark's 
A  in  Venice,  there  burns  a  perpetual  light.  It 
is  not  that  of  votive  candle  set  before  some  pic- 
tured saint,  nor  the  light  which  shows  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Host,  nor  that  of  the  seven  lamps 
which  are  the  seven  spirits  of  God  always  burn- 
ing before  the  throne,  but  only  the  memorial  to 
a  little  child  whose  life  was  sacrificed  by  a  com- 
munity's mistake. 

Beneath  one  of  the  windows  looking  toward 
the  sea  the  flickering  remembrance  has  burned 
four  hundred  years.  A  man  was  killed;  evi- 
dence pointed  to  a  boy  as  his  murderer  and  he 
was  quickly  condemned  and  executed.  After 
death  the  child's  innocence  was  proved  and  the 
Venetians  placed  this  light  in  the  church  for  a 
perpetual  remembrance  of  the  innocence  it  had 

wronged, 

271 


272    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

No  long,  dark  past  is  ours  and  yet  what  inno- 
cence have  we  too  sacrificed  by  our  social  mis- 
takes, what  aspirations,  what  hopes,  what 
splendid  possibilities  have  we  not  killed  in  our 
dealings  with  the  child.  We  can  put  up  no  lights 
in  warning  or  remembrance,  we  can  only  try  for 
reparation  in  our  future  work  and  in  an  ever- 
tended  and  undying  flame  of  zeal  and  devotion 
to  the  children  of  to-day  in  our  remorseless 
streets. 

It  is  one  of  the  happy  signs  of  the  moment 
that  in  our  fiction  and  in  our  intercourse  one 
hears  constantly  the  note  of  unrest  caused  by 
the  thought  of  other  people's  unhappiness.  Our 
imagination  is  being  awakened  and  reaches  be- 
yond the  physical  to  that  moral  suffering  which 
so  often  is  far  worse.  Our  divine  discontent 
comes  not  only  from  our  own  condition  but  also 
from  that  of  our  neighbors ;  and  this,  fortunately, 
is  being  felt  by  the  rich  as  well  as  the  poor.  We 
are  daily  growing  more  impatient  with  pallia- 
tives, with  the  little,  tinkering  methods  which 
may  by  good  luck  help  Lizzie  Jones  out  of  her 
difficulties  to-day  but  which  do  nothing  to  make 


The  Awakening  273 

it  impossible  for  the  same  conditions  to  entrap 
all  future  Lizzies.  It  is  convenient  to  have  some 
agency  to  which  to  refer  the  case  of  destitution 
which  comes  to  our  door,  but  what  are  we  do- 
ing to  make  such  poverty  impossible?  Our  great 
sin  of  the  past  has  been  social  irresponsibility. 
But  we  are  becoming  insistent  now  on  something 
more  than  philanthropy's  sentimental  side.  We 
want  to  reach  to  the  roots  of  all  the  evils  with 
which  our  chapters  have  dealt. 

We  have  seen  that  all  sorts  of  reasons  are 
given  why  our  neighbor  and  his  child  must  live 
in  dark,  unclean,  exorbitantly  costly  tenements. 
They  may  be  summed  up  in  one  word  —  greed. 
Some  landlords  ease  their  consciences  by  calling 
it  business.  But  we  have  seen  what  costly  busi- 
ness this  is  to  the  community.  Those  tenement 
owners  whose  names  appear  on  the  subscription 
lists  of  roof  camps  and  sanitaria  and  who  at 
the  same  time  support  the  lobby  which  defeats 
legislation  that  would  let  air  into  their  black 
tenement  rooms,  now  the  chief  recruiting  places 
for  consumption,  are  at  last  beginning  to  feel 
the  inconsistency  if  not  the  shame  of  their  po- 


274    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

sition.  It  has  been  these  same  owners  who  in 
the  past  have  fought  hardest  against  having 
their  names  placed  over  the  doors  of  their  rook- 
eries. How  hard  it  is  to  get  away  from  the  im- 
mediate dollar  mark!  It  was  when  the  Master 
of  Men  drove  the  money  changers  from  the  Tem- 
ple that  they  began  to  talk  of  him  as  a  dangerous 
man. 

Good  tenements  and  fair  living  wages  will 
come  when  we  as  a  community  have  determined 
upon  them.  Then  the  children  will  have  a  fair 
growing  chance.  A  physician  who  has  worked 
much  among  the  poor  said  to  us  recently :  "  The 
scientist  has  solved  his  end  of  the  problem  —  tu- 
berculosis is  entirely  in  the  hands  of  the  commun- 
ity. It  is  wholly  a  question  of  air,  diet  and  suffi- 
cient rest.  If  the  poor  man  has  not  these  at 
command,  the  choice  is  before  the  community  to 
see  that  he  has  them  or  to  take  the  consequences. 
For  no  man  is  imperiled  alone." 

The  choice  in  every  case  is  before  the  com- 
munity. As  we  have  followed  the  troubles  that 
come  to  the  Children's  Courts  out  to  their  source 
we  reach  a  very  definite  conclusion  about  reme- 


The  Awakening  275 

dies  and  what  could  so  promptly  be  done  were 
we  of  one  mind  in  the  community.  Our  desire 
and  our  determination  are  what  count.  The  best 
child  labor  laws  in  the  world  are  for  the  child 
but  half  the  solution.  Unless  we  give  the  parent 
enough  return  for  his  labor  to  support  his  family 
we  have  done  little  more  in  regulating  the  legal 
age  for  labor  than  to  say :  "  It  is  bad  for  the  child 
to  use  unformed  muscles;  therefore  it  is  better 
he  should  starve." 

The  community  can  see  to  it  that  supply 
reaches  demand,  that  the  piracy  that  now  inter- 
venes between  producer  and  consumer  is  wiped 
out.  The  Government  too  can  direct  the  immi- 
grant stream,  can  see  that  the  immigrant  is  in- 
formed of  actual  conditions  and  that  he  moves  on 
to  the  places  where  there  is  opportunity  for  his 
labor.  Much  is  to  be  done  for  the  conservation 
of  the  health  and  lives  of  the  workers.  As  one 
great  manufacturer  and  legislator,  who  has  sud- 
denly awakened,  is  now  pointing  out :  "  In  the 
factories  we  have  failed  to  treat  the  human  ele- 
ment in  production  in  the  intelligent  manner  in 
which  the  mechanical  is  treated."     The  machines 


276    The  Children  in  the  Shadow 

have  carefully  been  protected  from  dust  but  what 
has  been  done  to  protect  the  operators  from 
tuberculosis?  But  social  conscience  is  being 
aroused  in  that  direction,  too. 

Within  the  past  ten  years  there  have  been 
many  profit  sharing  schemes.  Some  have  sur- 
vived and  some  are  dead,  yet  this  is  one  of  the 
opportunities  of  the  future  which  cannot  fail  of 
great  development.  Whatever  may  be  said  of 
the  value  of  capital  and  brains  on  the  one  side 
and  labor  on  the  other,  we  are  beginning  to 
realize  that  the  present  ratio  of  reward  is  mani- 
festly unfair  when  we  consider  all  the  human 
lives  engaged  in  hard,  unhealthy  and  often  dan- 
gerous occupations. 

But  the  forces  of  good  will  are  gradually  com- 
bining to  stop  human  waste.  The  churches  are 
awakening  to  the  truth  that  religion  means  re- 
lationship, social  service.  The  saving  of  bodies 
and  souls  must  go  hand  in  hand.  Tardily  the 
dry  discussion  of  man-made  dogma  is  being 
abandoned  and  we  are  getting  down  to  divine, 
simple  truths.  There  are  few  conceptions  of 
practical  philanthropy  not  implicit  in  religion 


The  Awakening  277 

when  we  cease  circling  it  and  go  to  its  heart. 

When  we  look  at  the  children  dancing  in  the 
little  make-believe  parks  or  on  the  occasional  rec- 
reation piers  that  have  been  opened  to  them  at 
night,  and  at  their  elders  with  the  lines  of  care 
momentarily  lightened  on  their  faces,  we  cannot 
but  realize  what  even  a  fragment  of  a  chance 
means  to  our  neighbor  and  his  child.  This  is  of 
happier  promise  than  the  light  that  was  lit  four 
hundred  years  ago.  We  go  away  convinced  that 
every  pier  should  have  its  music  at  night  and  ita 
joyful,  dancing  little  army.  Surely  lights  are 
being  kindled  to-day  that  will  in  time  bring  the 
children  out  of  the  shadow.  It  is  for  us  to  tend 
and  feed  the  flame. 

Perhaps  Ellen  Keys  has  best  summed  up  our 
feelings  for  our  neighbor's  child  when  she  speaks 
of  the  great  future  movement  of  liberty  that 
"  shall  bring  the  children's  declaration  of  rights 
and  make  an  end  of  their  spiritual  and  bodily 
ill-treatment,  which  must  appear  to  the  future 
as  monstrous  as  negro  slavery  does  to  us." 


AA    001  021  032    6 


CENTRAL  UNIVERSITY  LIBRARY 


DATE  DUE 


CI  39 


UCSD  Libt. 


